The Turning

Screamin neck, not a sound. You can hang me from that tree, I don’t care, you and them can hang me, I don’t care.

  Stop it.

  Let em do it, let em see, the pack a cunts. Never know when I might bite, eh. Even when I’m dead. Shark’ll still go you when you think he’s dead.

  Happy New Year, Boner.

  Get me out, Jack. Let’s piss off.

  You are out. See, we’re in the courtyard.

  Out! Out, you stupid bitch.

  I’m going now.

  You’re old, he said mildly. You used to be pretty.

  That’s enough.

  They said it, not me.

  I have to go.

  See if I fuckin care.

  I really have to leave.

  Well it’s not fuckin right. I never said a word. Never once.

  Boner, I can’t stay.

  Just drivin, that’s all I did. Never touched anythin, anybody, and never said a word – Jesus!

  I’ll turn you around.

  Please, Jackie. Let’s ride, let’s just arc it up and go.

  Both of us were crying when I wheeled him into the darkness of the ward. He slumped in the chair. I left him there.

  A week later he was dead. The hospital told me it was a massive heart attack. I didn’t press for details. Looking back I see that I never did, not once.

  There were six of us at the cremation – a nurse, four men and me. Nobody spoke but the priest. I didn’t hear a word that was said. I was too busy staring at those men. They were older of course, but I knew they were the cops from back home. There was the neat one in the good suit who’d called me about Boner’s breakdown. Two others whose faces were familiar. And the tall redhead who’d asked to see my arms when I was sixteen years old. His hair was faded, receding, his eyes still watchful.

  I began to weep. I thought of Boner’s fire, his twisted bones, his terrible silence. I got a hold of myself but during the committal, as the coffin sank, the sigh I let out was almost a moan. The sound of recognition, the sound of too late.

  I walked out. The redheaded detective intercepted me on the steps. The others hung back in the shade of the crematorium.

  My condolences, Jackie, he purred. I know you were his only friend.

  He didn’t have any friends, I said, stepping round him. You should know that, you bastard – you made sure of it.

  I’m retired now, he said.

  Congratulations, I said as I pushed away.

  I drove around the river past my office and showrooms and went on down to the harbour. I cruised along the wharf a way and then along the mole to where the river surged out into the sea. I parked. The summer sun drove down but I was shivery.

  The talk on the radio was all about the endless Royal Commission. I snapped it off and laid my cheek against the hot window.

  I didn’t see it whole yet – it was too early for the paranoia and second-guessing to set in – but I could feel things change shape around me. My life, my history, the sense I had of my self, were no longer solid.

  All I knew was this, that I hadn’t been Boner’s friend at all. Hadn’t been for years. A friend paid attention, showed a modicum of curiosity, made a bit of an effort. A friend didn’t believe the worst without checking. A friend didn’t keep her eyes shut and walk away. Just the outline now, but I was beginning to see.

  They’d turned me. They played with me, set me against him to isolate him completely. Boner was their creature. All that driving, the silence, the leeway, it had to be drugs. He was driving their smack. Or something. Whatever it was he was their creature and they broke him.

  I sat in the car beneath the lighthouse and thought of how I’d looked on and seen nothing. I was no different to my parents. Yet I always believed I’d come so far, surpassed so much. At fifteen I would have annihilated myself for love, but over the years something had happened, something I hadn’t bothered to notice, as though in all that leaving, in the rush to outgrow the small-town girl I was, I’d left more of myself behind than the journey required.

  Immunity

  THERE WAS THE BOY I LIKED. It was the war that made me think of him and the time we rode south together on the train, in the days when the trains still ran. He sat right up the front of the carriage in an army uniform. He was alone. His hair was so long that it hung out of his beret like Che Guevara’s. The boots and webbing, the stripes on his arm, they looked incongruous. He was fifteen years old.

  It took me three hours to work up the nerve to go and sit beside him. Although it was the last day of the holidays the carriage wasn’t even half full. There were some old people, a couple of kids in batik shirts and a few other rowdy boys in khaki who I had to pass on my way down the aisle. When I plumped down beside him he looked up from his book a moment and smiled politely. He smelled of starch – yes, of Juicy Fruit and Fabulon.

  He went back to reading with a solemn expression. The book was something called Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

  Any good? I asked.

  Nah, he said. Kinda boring.

  What’s with the uniform?

  Cadet camp, he said. We were up at Northam.

  Oh. How was it?

  Hot as buggery. In winter it’s worse. Tin barracks, camp stretchers, awful food.

  Geez, I said. Sounds grouse.

  We rode along without talking for a while. It was kind of awkward. He was by the window and when I looked out at the paddocks and the hills and the dry January bushland rolling by, it must have seemed like I was staring at him.

  What? he said, half-grinning.

  The uniform and everything. The army stuff. I don’t get it.

  He shrugged.

  We’re out of Vietnam now, I said.

  Lucky us.

  I mean, didn’t you worry? That they might send you?

  I’m at school, he said.

  But later. If it had kept going.

  We’re not really in the army.

  Almost, though. They’re training you for war.

  He looked out the window.

  Will you join up? I asked. When you finish school?

  The army? No, it’s foul.

  I don’t get it, I said. Being in the cadets.

  There’s good stuff, he said, looking around him now as if to see who might be listening in. Bivouacs, hikes. We build things.

  And shoot guns, I murmured.

  Yeah, he said with a grin. That’s the best part.

  Right.

  Appalled as I was, I found myself smiling with him. He had slightly girlish lips. Beneath the crisply rolled-up sleeve and the sergeant’s stripes the skin of his arm was tanned and I wanted to press against it.

  You going to Angelus? he asked, looking at his hands. One of his thumbnails was black. I thought of it coming off when school got back.

  Yeah, I said.

  Ever been before?

  That’s when I realized that he didn’t know me at all. We went to the same high school, where he was a year above me. I’d been watching him for eighteen months now, finding excuses to idle past him at lunchtime where he sat outside the library with some boys who didn’t seem to care about him one way or the other. I had assumed that my face was familiar at the very least. But he didn’t have a clue who I was.

  I shook my head.

  Sorta crappy town, he said.

  I’m from City Beach, I lied.

  Posh, he said.

  Not really.

  Is it a girls’ school?

  No, I said. I didn’t know anything about City Beach. I went there once for a swim and got stung by a jellyfish. My father said I was a bloody sook.

  Behind us, a baby began to cry. I pulled my hair behind my ear. I had lovely hair then. He seemed to grow more conscious of me there beside him, to shrink somehow because of it. I knew all about him. I knew he was lonely. I saw him ride down on the wharf some Sundays. I used to picture myself walking on the beach with him. He didn’t have that ugliness, the sporting cruelty that boys are supposed to have. Which is why the un
iform and the talk of guns upset me.

  Well, I think it’s stupid, someone like you, being an army cadet.

  Well, that’s your opinion.

  It’s dangerous. Reckless.

  Nah.

  Playing soldiers, I said scornfully.

  I bit my lip then. He was fingering his book. I’d lost him.

  The wheels clattered beneath us. His boots squeaked as he moved in the seat beside me.

  Last year, he said, this kid got electrocuted. That’s what they reckon. He was signalman. Carrying the radio, you know? It’s got a huge thing on it, a whip aerial. He was climbing over something. The aerial touched some powerlines.

  God, I said. And he died?

  That’s what they reckon.

  That’s horrible.

  Yeah.

  You ever think about stuff like that?

  He burred the pages of the book against his palm.

  Sometimes.

  Death, I mean.

  He nodded.

  This week I had this weird thing. I was in the butts. At the rifle range? You have to take turns being down behind the bank. You know, putting the targets up and down, marking hits and stuff. You wave a flag for a washout, a total miss. It’s boring as hell. Anyway, I’m down there and all this crap’s going overhead, you know, and all the rounds are whacking targets and thumping into the sandbank on the other side of us. And there’s this ricochet. It doesn’t sound anything like on TV. You know, on cowboy shows. This was like some kind of moan – really scary-sounding – and then suddenly, next to me on the bench, there’s this white thing like a star and it’s spinning and spinning, hot as hell and just standing up on one of its points next to me leg.

  A bullet?

  Yep.

  And I’m just sittin there with me eyes out on sticks, staring at it.

  What happened?

  He looked at me. He seemed to be looking at my knees.

  Nothing, he said. It just ran out of puff. It slowed down and fell over. Right there, like where you are. Right next to my leg.

  Did you keep it? Have you got it?

  No. I didn’t wanna touch it. But it was kind of like a sign. It made me feel weird. Kind of immune. Death right there beside me and I’m immune.

  God, I said.

  Yeah.

  We were close to home now. The ranges were in view. The air had that southern chill to it again.

  I’m going to school here this year, I said.

  Really?

  Yeah. Hell, if you’re immune to death I’m gunna hang around with you.

  He laughed and I could have torn my tongue out from sheer embarrassment. I was hurling myself at him. It was worse than walking past his house five times in one afternoon which I did one Sunday. That time I saw him at the window. He had a broom in his hand or maybe a hockey stick. He was looking but not seeing. It made me wonder about him.

  We sat quietly the last few minutes as if both of us were trying to figure out what was going on between us. I breathed in the smell of him, looked at his hands on the unread book. I thought of him crossing the quad to see me next week. People around us pulled down their luggage.

  When we came into the station there was a cop car there with its light going.

  Shit, he said.

  I knew who his father was. He grabbed his duffle bag from the rack and pushed past me before the train had even stopped.

  I never spoke to him again. This new war made me remember.

  It was his little sister in hospital with meningitis. I heard all about it later. She died.

  Defender

  WITH THE WINDOWS DOWN and the autumn breeze in their hair, Vic and Gail wound up through the valley past vineyards and fruit stands and ramshackle craft shops toward the scarp where the morning sun was still in the trees. She drove. He was tilted back amidst the pillows she’d wedged around him, oblivious to her sidelong glances, the way she chewed her lip. He was preoccupied with memories. After three weeks in a darkened room, they were a swarm he could neither evade nor disperse. He let out a snort.

  What? said Gail, winding up her window.

  I used to play basketball.

  Yeah.

  Wasn’t any good, of course. In the city I’d always played football. Took me half a season to understand that I wasn’t allowed to tackle the opposition – you know, knock blokes over. They made me a guard. I thought it was like being a fullback. Man! he said with a laugh.

  A defender, said Gail. That’s you all over.

  Couldn’t shoot for peanuts. My lay-ups were rubbish. If I somehow got a clean break toward our own basket I’d pound down the court, sick with dread, knowing that I was gonna throw a brick. But I loved stopping the other guys getting through. Always did love a zone defence, you know, a real keyway lockdown.

  Ah, said Gail wryly. The old keyway lockdown.

  We used to play these Aboriginal kids from St Joe’s, he continued, unabashed. They always flogged us. So arrogant and graceful and hostile – just all over us – you know, and then somehow, chirpy as you like, they’d con us into walking them back to the hostel afterwards. I think they were afraid of the dark or maybe something they had to walk past.

  Gail let the window down again. Her queasy sense of dread was back. Maybe this weekend wasn’t such a good idea. She was convinced that they needed to be with close friends. But fond of Vic as they were, Daisy and Fenn were more her friends than his. She didn’t want him to feel ambushed, outnumbered. Trouble was, he had no real friends. There were colleagues, comrades, but no one intimate.

  I saw one of em again last year, said Vic. One of those boys. That school case we did in the Pilbara? He’s a teacher there now. Must be the only blackfella I knew who made it through school.

  That you know of, Gail said.

  Teaches phys ed. He saw me and just laughed.

  You didn’t tell me about it.

  It was kind of awkward. I mean I always liked him. I was glad to see him. God, I almost hugged the guy and congratulated him for being a big success.

  You didn’t!

  Just think of the odds. In our day, from that town. The others’ll be dead or in jail. Making it to forty’s an achievement. But, no, I didn’t do anything stupid. Still, I wanted to catch up with him, buy him a drink, but I fudged it. It suddenly got too . . . complicated.

  Complicated? Gail asked. What’re you saying?

  Vic felt her looking his way now. She had the wrong idea but he had no confidence in his ability to explain himself. His face began to tingle with a hint of neuralgia. He sank back and closed his eyes a moment.

  They came into the jarrah forest, a wall of grey on either side of the road, and the air was cool and sharp with eucalyptus.

  You should go back there some time, said Gail after a long silence.

  The Pilbara?

  No, the old town. You should deal with these things. God, last year I was down there every month.

  The old town, he said bitterly.

  Well, you were like a zombie.

  My parents died.

  Sure. But it was more than that. You know it.

  Just small-town shit, Gail.

  Which you haven’t dealt with.

  He sighed and looked at her long arms draped on the wheel, the hair licking back over her ears in the slipstream.

  You should have come with me, she said fiercely. You should have.

  For your sake?

  Both our sakes. You’re stuck, Vic. You won’t admit it but you are. Which, in case you hadn’t noticed, leaves me stuck alongside you.

  Stuck with me, you mean.

  That’s not what I said, she murmured. You’re like someone under siege. And I know it’s all these sudden memories. But are they coming because you’ve been sick, or are you sick from remembering? Like you’ve held it out too long.

  You’re a fundraiser, not a therapist.

  Well, pretty soon you might need both!

  What does that mean, Gail?

  Do you realize that
every vivid experience in your life comes from your adolescence? You should hear yourself talk. You’re trapped in it. Nothing you do now holds your attention like the past. Not me, not even your work, these days. I feel like I’m getting less real to you by the day, that I’m just part of some long, faded epilogue to your real life. Last year I put up with it. It was lonely, Vic, but now it’s worse. Shingles, twice in two months. That’s a physical breakdown. How long before you cave in altogether?

  She drove. He licked his chapped lips. Each of them sensed the uneasy crossing of a boundary. There was relief in it – they’d been like two people holding their breath so long, but they were fearful of where this might lead.

  Why are we going away this weekend? he asked.

  A change of scene.

  A change of company?

  That too, she said with a sigh.

  You’ve started going to church again.

  How’d you know?

  I found a pew sheet.

  Well, last year I went whale watching. This year I thought I’d try the Anglicans.

  I’m not sure that’s an evolutionary progression.

  I don’t think you’re in a position to talk about progress, Vic.

  I thought you’d never go back to all that nonsense.

  Well, it’s not quite the same brand of nonsense. And I’m sorry you’re threatened by it.

  Vic took a breath but said nothing. He put a hand to the welter of scabs on his face. He could feel the others itching at his scalp and eyelid but he resisted the impulse to claw at them. The neuralgia was well and truly back. The deep, prickling heat was, he now understood, a warning sign. He took his hand away and looked at his wife. She was crying, blinking furiously, tears streaking back across her temples in the wind.

  Sorry, he said.

  Doesn’t matter.

  I’m being a dickhead.

  I have to pull over.

  Gail braked and eased them onto a wedge of pink gravel. She switched the engine off and snatched up a tissue from the box on the dash. She looked away but she sensed him slumped beside her.

  Last year, she said. Those weekends in Angelus. I had an affair.

  Ah. Right.

  It was stupid, and wrong. I didn’t plan it. Lasted a few weeks. I’m so sorry.

  That’s why I should have come?