Tide Read online

  I asked her why she did it, and she said, I wanted to fly. To fly out of here. Like on the Royal Flying Doctor when you’re sick or smashed up in the mines. I hate it here. And Four Eyes’s words seemed like they were from somewhere else. Somewhere cool and fresh and full of daffodils. Not scummy plants that live without water and huddle under the sun. But plants that love the sun and reach to the sun because it is comforting. We don’t understand what ‘warm’ is here. It’s just hot and less hot. And then he was crawling on top of me and pulling at my clothes and I was falling, falling, and the pain seemed just as it should be, and the dust swallowed me and I suffocated and died.

  I said to her, I’ll tell you a secret. Don’t tell the gang because they’ll use it against me. I write poems. I do! Honestly. I just keep them to myself. And they’re all in my head. And all about me. I write poems about the dry and the heat and the dust and the tailings and the stunted trees and the hot chick I can’t have. But keep that to yourself!

  I’d exhausted myself and stared at her. I leant across and pulled a long strand of hair from her eye, wet with perspiration. She moved my hand gently away and said, We are all falling to death. All of us. Even Four Eyes and Tender Terry. They are falling as well, and it’s terrible.

  EXTREMITIES

  Apart from the people, the country is dominated by breakaways, saltbush, mulga, emu bush, heaps of tailings, and active mine sites. In between, there are emus, kangaroos, cattle, sheep, goats, foxes and rabbits. And there are eagles, cockatoos, racehorse goannas, songbirds, termites and echidnas. And much more if you look. Deadly dry or in flood, summer is a cauldron. But the red dirt makes life. You don’t have to look hard, though after a while some stop looking. Anything not claimed by mining companies is taken up by cattle stations. It isn’t wildflower season. It is mid-summer at the extremities. Tourists stay south.

  But it is gold that brings the men to this outback prick on the map, once described by a prime minister’s wife as the ‘arsehole of the earth’. It is a town of shacks and dongas. The single men’s quarters are lined with pick-ups that crunch the dirt, and stone roads branch out to the mines surrounding the town.

  The outback is a space of temporary ‘fly-in fly-out’ homes. Shifting populations go with the mines. Towns don’t get a chance. But by local standards this is a very old town and, being on a major highway, it’s a stop-off point for truckies, and tourists, in the season. It has its life-thread, though its existence still centres on the mines.

  Kepler and Pete were in town on a three-month contract. It was better than being outside town, way off the highway, but it was still six hundred k’s from the city, in the heat, and it still meant living in a donga. This time round they were trying to save money to return to Thailand and get stuck into Phuket pussy. They talked about it constantly. Their first visit, also funded by work on the mines, had been a non-stop orgy. Kepler had enjoyed showing the young dog a few tricks, and the young dog’s drive kept the old dog on his toes. Kepler was forty and Pete twenty-two, but when it came to pussy, age didn’t matter. Except the age of the pussy, of course.

  They both worked long shifts, and wanted as little free time as possible. Being there was about earning. On Friday and Saturday nights they drank in the pub, tipping the skimpies, but otherwise they worked, watched pornos on their laptops, and slept. There was a bestiality DVD that did the rounds for a while. Pete and Kepler both watched it (on their own) twice over, and discussed it in detail. Generally, they preferred Asian bondage and black anal. There was a brisk black market for these DVDs among the workers. Helped pass the time.

  But when the mine had an emergency shutdown for a couple of days they were at a loss. They started drinking early. Sitting outside the cramped dongas, feet up and hats pulled low, they downed beer after beer, frying in the morning sun. By lunch they were too pissed to care about eating, both enervated and stirred up by the heat.

  Pete suggested they go out to the breakaways behind the new mine site. Let’s take some beers out there. Kepler agreed, though it wouldn’t be any better drinking out there than in camp. But then Pete said, They’re full of caves. It’d be cooler in there than out here. Not really deep caves, just hollows in the rock. But they’ll be like a fridge. I’ve been in one when I was a kid.

  Driving out, haunted by the stillness, the mines in shutdown, they spotted a goat. Kepler always carried a .243 rifle behind the seat of whichever company vehicle he had. Fuck, Pete, he called, grab the wheel, I’m going to pop that little bastard’s clogs.

  They tussled between steering wheel and wresting the rifle from its bed. The vehicle skewed across the road, though Kepler had taken his foot off the accelerator. It was still rolling along, vaguely following the goat, which went at a slow trot, looking back over its shoulder. Keep the bloody wheel straight, yelled Kepler. Pete was laughing, near hysterical. Get the little fucker, Kep!

  Kepler loved his bolt-action Ruger. He got the barrel out the window and managed to stroke it, load it and fire it with one drunken movement. He winged the goat, which half dropped, stunned, then stood upright and bolted into the scrub.

  Got the fucker, Pete yelled. Good shot, mate.

  Pulling the rifle in and handing it to Pete, Kepler took the wheel and accelerated. Watch what you do with that, you little bastard. Click the fucking safety on. Which Pete did, because he loved guns.

  They pulled over at the base of a breakaway. They could hear the hot wind crackling through the fluted rock. Grabbing beers, they started lurching up the rock face. As they went higher, they heard voices.

  Hear that? said Pete, struggling to grip a rock and hold a sixpack.

  Of course I fucking heard it, said Kepler. I wanna see what’s going on. He glanced back down. There’s a fucking vehicle down there.

  He handed his sixpack to Pete and motioned for him to be quiet. He climbed a little higher, peered up, then returned to Pete.

  Whoever it is knows we’re here, he whispered. Would have seen and heard us miles away. Would have heard that gunshot as well. Probably freaked them out a bit.

  As Pete tried to work out the logic, Kepler lifted himself high and called out, Hell-o! Who’s up there?

  A woman’s voice came back, None of your business, mate! Then, after a pause, What do you want?

  Kepler, as usual, took the reins. We’re from the mines. Day off due to the shutdown. Just going up to the cool of the caves to have a few beers. Warm beers by now!

  Pete wondered why they were bothering being careful and polite.

  The woman came back after a while with, We’re just going.

  There was a pause and then she continued, This is Badimia land. Be respectful.

  Pete burst out laughing. Fuck, Kep, it’s a darkie!

  Kepler’s racism reached back through generations and he was proud of it, unlike those other racists in camp who claimed they weren’t. He said, Shut the fuck up, Pete, you’ll scare her off! Let’s have some fun. Wonder how many of them there are. Pity you left the rifle in the car.

  You didn’t say anything about bringing the rifle, Kep.

  I shouldn’t have to. You should use your initiative.

  Seeing Pete downcast, Kepler soothed him. Only pulling your leg, mate. Same sentence for shooting one of those bastards as shooting a white bloke! Did I get you going, mate? Stir your crotch up a little bit? With that, Kepler grabbed Pete’s balls and gave them a hard squeeze. Thought so! he said, gleeful. Pete tried, too late, to knock Kepler’s hand away. He laughed it off, irritated but used to it.

  They reached the caves and looked carefully around. No sign of anyone. They made for the largest one, where their voices echoed. There was ochre painting on the walls. Figures they couldn’t quite make out. And emus, roos and echidnas. It was a gallery. Kepler, suspicious by nature, said, No footprints in here. Not even any roo shit. Nothing’s been in here for a long while.

  Where was that woman when she called out? asked Pete.

  Fuck knows. Somewhere near here.


  They walked out of the cave and scanned the area. They looked down in the direction of the other vehicle but couldn’t see it. But the angle was different. Maybe you couldn’t see it from there. No sound of an engine starting, of a vehicle crunching its way across the saltbush and quartz fragments to the dirt road alongside the mine.

  They drank the beer even though it was hot. It made them pissed and gave them headaches. Crashing on the cool sand of the cave, they stared at the paintings.

  That one looks more like a fucking goat than a roo, said Kepler. Must be a roo, though. I mean, these are really old. Probably painted thousands of years before there were any fucking feral goats.

  Pete half wanted to vandalise them, as a gift to Kepler, because Kepler was talking weird and made him feel uneasy. But he was dizzy and blanked out.

  Kepler lifted himself up on his elbow and gazed at Pete. Fucking chip off the ol’ block, this one, he said to himself. He looked back at the paintings, which began to swirl and spiral. Shit, must be the heat, takes more booze than that to get me like this. He was in Thailand again, watching Pete arse-fucking a little bitch. Kepler was laughing as the girl screamed, No more, it hurts, it hurts, and Pete went harder and harder. I hate women but I love them, Kep, he’d said after. I have to hurt them to love them.

  It was evening when they woke, bursting for a piss. They stood and moaned and unzipped their shorts. Don’t piss on the fucking wall, said Kepler. Pete, confused, went out and pissed over the edge, as did Kepler. Pete looked at Kepler’s trunk-like dick, full of admiration. Keep your eye on your own pecker, this one’s mine, said Kepler. He was out of sorts.

  Shit, Kep, look!

  Kepler had seen it. Something quick through the rocks.

  Looked like a fucking girl!

  They ran and slipped and struggled down towards the vision and couldn’t see or hear anything. Jesus, like the bloody Nullarbor nymph! said Kepler.

  What?

  Don’t worry, said Kepler, you’re too young.

  Pete didn’t like that. Kepler rarely referred to the age difference.

  Gotta tell you mate, this place is giving me the creeps, said Pete.

  We should be getting back anyway, said Kepler. I don’t have time for a bunch of blacks playing silly buggers.

  They woke the next morning feeling really ill. The mine was still shut, and they had little to do but drink and watch pornos. They tended not to squeeze into the one donga to watch pornos. That didn’t seem right in Australia, that was for holidays – though plenty of blokes did it, especially the married ones, away from their wives, who seemed to take comfort in sharing the guilt and the love.

  They skipped breakfast, and after hair of the dog, looked forward to lunch. But the sight of greasy meat piled high made them want to throw up. They nibbled, green around the gills, and then left together. The other blokes asked what had got into them. Can’t do anything without each other, those two. Odd.

  Why are we going back, Kep? asked Pete.

  Fuckin’ think of anything else to do, mate? At least it’s cool up there.

  It’s cool in the car, Kepler, if only you’d wind up your window and let the air-con do its thing. The vehicle clunked over potholes left by mining trucks, and they stammered their fuck-offs. Something close to hatred hung in the air. They’d hit the vodka. Not good out in the heat.

  Kepler adjusted the rear-vision mirror and caught a glimpse of himself. His face was red and weary and he was getting uglier. Grooves had worn into his cheeks and his eyes were bloodshot. He glanced across at Pete, still fresh-faced despite the sleaze in his eyes. He’s treading a well-worn path, thought Kepler, and smiled.

  What you smiling at, Kep? asked Pete. Kepler didn’t answer, so Pete, pumped, continued. Might see another goat, Kep. Maybe I should get the rifle out.

  Fuck off. Kepler gritted his teeth. You shoot a goat and I’ll fucking shoot you.

  Pete was perplexed. Kepler hated goats. Pete felt he was with a stranger, and it didn’t feel good. He thought of Thailand going wrong. He gazed through the window at the laterite and sandstone outcrops that looked like they’d been chewed and spat out. He never could ‘get’ this land, though he’d been around it, on and off, all his life. He wondered, if he were stranded, whether he’d eat saltbush and go mad. The sky was so blue it burnt his eyes through the tinted glass, and he turned away, staring down at his jeans.

  They reached the cave and flopped on its cool white sand. Pete opened a beer and offered it to Kepler, who waved it away. He was studying the walls.

  If you look, he said, you’ll see two goats in there among the native animals. Clear as day.

  Really? said Pete, who had sculled a can and was flipping open another one. Goats make me want to get hammered.

  Kepler turned to him, looked like he was going to hit him, then laughed and took a beer. Pete’s spirits were rekindled? On ya, mate. Thought I’d lost you there.

  Flaked out on the sandy floor of the cavern, staring at the paintings, they lost track of time. They woke at twilight to the sound of a woman’s voice.

  Don’t drink grog in there, she said.

  They looked about them but couldn’t see much. It was hazy, getting dark. They had a deadly thirst. Some sort of insects were in the air.

  Who’s there? yelled Pete.

  Only a cicada replied. Stumbling out of the cave and down to their vehicle, the men were covered in scratches and dry-retching when they reached it.

  In his donga, Kepler wakes or half wakes. In his head, he hears women’s voices. He gags and searches for water. Cold water. He opens the bar fridge near his bed. Full of beer. Just beer.

  The mine will be working today. He pulls on some clothes, and the throbbing in his head gets louder. He wants out. He opens the door and falls through to the dust. The slaughtered goat is strewn over the car bonnet, the windscreen, and through the interior. He gags. It is covered in cicadas, aged cicadas that have emerged from their many years below ground, hiding in the cool before confrontation with the heat. Some of the old blokes at the pub call cicadas the true gold of the town. Take as long as gold to form, and they can fly and sing. More than gold will ever buy you. He remembers this as he reaches past the gore to retrieve his rifle.

  Then he calls Pete to come out. Pete appears naked at his door. Kepler eyes him off.

  Why, Pete? Kepler asks. Why? Why don’t you hear what they’re saying? We’ll always be tourists, Pete. Even you, and you come from this fucking red dust hole, you’ll always be a tourist.

  What are you on about, you old bastard? What the fuck are you doing with that rifle? Pete notices the remains of the goat. Have you lost your mind? I thought you liked goats these days? Fucking booze sent you troppo?

  Your idea of a joke, Pete? Sick little fuck.

  Kepler shoots Pete in the genitals, then reloads and shoots him in the head.

  Bigoted little prick, he says. No respect for women. I’ve done the world a favour. Appeased the Goat God. He laughs.

  Other miners rush forward, grapple Kepler to the ground and rip the rifle away. He scratches at the red dust.

  Now I’m ready to speak with you, you black bitch, he says. No more fucking hiding. Let’s have it out, one on one. One on one!

  INNER CITY

  When Turk and Blue left for the city all their mates said, Watch out, city slickers! And it has to be said that the boys left with every intention of remapping the city, of turning the world upside down.

  They were the closest of mates. They had always been neighbours, attended the same schools, and both had lost a parent while young. They played together and drank together; they’d even had sex with the same girl after the school ball.

  Some of the townsfolk said they looked like brothers, but that was surely just from almost two decades of always seeing them together. They had grown alike, at least in their mannerisms. Nobody could work out which of them had first got the habit of flicking his hair out of his eyes, even after a haircut when there was not much to
be flicked. Nor could it be ascertained who was the first to blow his nose into his hand and then wipe the mucus on any nearby surface. And then there was the knuckle-cracking habit that made even family members want to throw up, and they were used to it. Of course, Blue’s grandfather was known to do that in his younger days – couldn’t much now because he had gout, and his fingers looked like they’d been put through a mangle.

  Both Turk and Blue were big strapping lads. The town’s older women said that about them with some pride. Fine footballers at school, they’d helped bring the town a couple of trophies. Turk was a ruckman and Blue a forward.

  The most startling difference between them was Blue’s gingerish-blond hair, though it wasn’t really that far in colour and texture from Turk’s off-brown blondish mop. If you asked someone from town which was which, they’d seem to forget this difference and say, Well, how can you tell the difference really? It’s as if they’re twins. An outsider would look, incredulous, and pick it right away, insisting, They don’t look anything alike!

  Turk and Blue had been talking about moving to the city for a year or more. They wanted a taste of the fast life. They liked going clubbing, and had long been the town’s dope dealers. This was kept among friends, though the police and important people around town knew and turned a blind eye. If it wasn’t them, it’d be someone worse, seemed to be the consensus. And Turk and Blue did care about their customers, and always kept it basically to mull – didn’t want their mates losing it to ice or smack. The odd eckie here and there, but mainly mull. And they grew it themselves, keeping the business local.