Carpentaria (44 page)

Others said it was Kevin’s own fault because he was always looking for trouble. And Kevin, any moment he regained consciousness, his eyes looked as though he was looking at a white-fired hell. Sometimes word came back on the grapevine to the family about Kevin’s condition. An old tribal lady, a traditional doctor, went down to see the girls, and she said she had seen him. She said she went to the big hospital, all the time pretending to visit sick relatives from out of town.

They knew she had never left Desperance in her life, but they believed everything she told them. As a gifted ventriloquist she spoke with the voice of a spirit, a guardian angel, who had sat alongside of Kevin’s bed and waited. ‘He tries to scream the word “fire” but he is still running away, still unable to fight the souls of the people who did this to him.’ Girlie, Janice and Patsy existed just to get word from the old woman. They sat in the kitchen, or outside in front of the house waiting to see who would come next to tell them something, and waiting for their two big brothers to come home.

Inso and Donny had left their mine jobs and driven all night over the slippery road in the rain, to get down to the hospital to see Kevin. It was just heartbreaking to sit there and look at him. The brothers sat uncomfortably on either side of the bed in side chairs, in the white painted room. There was not much talking, except about going home, and to offer words of support, just to let Kevin know the big brothers were there. They talked normal, not mucking around talking, but strong talk, nothing’s changed kind of feeling, because they were the big brothers, to let Kevin know, and let him know when nobody else was in the white room checking every five minutes, he would be avenged, total, and sure, to the end.

They tried to avoid looking directly at him, staring instead at the starched white hospital linen, unnerved by the sight of all of the medical equipment which had become a part of him. The machines had dials scratching jagged lines on graph paper. Others had dials which shook while trying to stay in one position, while regulating tubes going in and out of Kevin’s body, wrapped from head to foot in bandages or plaster.

They found they could not communicate anything of how they felt after a few words, so they sat there in silence, pondering who did this to him. Then, Inso or Donny looked at each other and gave the nod to go, so they could talk, and they left. A few hours later, down at the pub, they would use the payphone to call Truthful and ask him, ‘What the bloody hell was going on up there?’ There was no way, they told Truthful, that they believed he was doing everything he could to catch the buggers, ‘Are you?’ Each took the phone in turn to accuse him of protecting the bastards who picked on Kevin. ‘Aren’t you? You moron.’

‘Give me a break,’ Truthful demanded, and told them to keep away because he was pretty close to catching the culprits and he did not want them frightened off and leaving town. ‘Ah! Yeah!’ Donny and Inso replied before hanging up on him, while Truthful was trying to remind them about their jobs at the mine. Truthful was moved to the top of their list of how they were going to deal with everything, once they got home.

‘They’ve still got him on the respirator,’ Truthful told Girlie, the first, second and third day. He kept coming down to the Phantom place expecting sympathy for the huge load on his plate. He still didn’t have a clue who had beaten up Kevin. He and Bruiser were already busy enough investigating Gordie’s death.

‘There can’t be that many hoon cars to look at,’ Girlie clipped in the icy voice she reserved for the world of the incompetent. She was sitting at the kitchen table, arms folded, staring straight into Truthful’s face. The other two sisters sat around the kitchen table as well, their big arms folded, waiting to hear what he had to say.

‘There is no need for the hostilities,’ he replied. ‘You already know I’ve asked everybody in this useless town.’

‘Oh! Yeah!’ Girlie glared, her arms and legs crossed tighter. ‘Well! I don’t think that is good enough. What do you think Janice? Do you think that is good enough? Hey! And what about you Patsy? Don’t you think someone should have been arrested by now? Someone taken in for questioning?’ And she looked straight back at Truthful. Her words were like fired bullets. ‘You were quick smart about finding a few little black boys to arrest for that stupid Gordie. The pimp. He deserved what he got. But what did our Kevin do? What harm did he do to anyone?’

Truthful was fuming, said he thought they were a mob of hypocrites, ‘I seen the way you looked after your brother.’ He dared not mention that two of the little black boys Girlie referred to were her stepbrothers. Not in this house if anyone had any sense.

‘Oh! Really. And how’s that?’ Girlie challenged.

‘Forget it,’ Truthful said, feeling the last thing he needed was to create an enemy out of Girlie right now. He tried to touch her on the arm but she moved away. ‘I don’t know what I am saying half the time. I have had hardly any sleep for days. I got to get some sleep soon or I am going to go mad thinking about what has happened to everybody.’

There was silence in the room. They knew that he was blaming his lack of sleep on Girlie for not letting him stay with her. They kept their mouths shut for a change, because they knew the truth of the matter was otherwise, it was Truthful himself who did not want to stay. Girlie had hissed at her sisters days ago, ‘Said he was too busy. Said he had to guard the prison until he could get some help. Said he had to keep an eye on those boys. Well! That suits me fine, the big ugly bastard, stinking of grog and who knows what. I bet he is molesting those little boys because nobody cares what happens to them.’

The two other sisters had heard rumours many times previously about Truthful, Shh! being bisexual. The boys at the pub talked about it around the pool table in a flippant kind of way. In terms of what they heard had happened to other boys after hours, being picked up on the road by Truthful, or what they thought would happen to them if they ended up locked up for the night. Neither Janice nor Patsy discussed any of these revelations with Girlie, since she was sleeping with him, and maybe she did not want to know, because, surely, she would know. A woman knows.

It was really peculiar how an ordinary house could evoke strange pictures in the loose minds of people. It was really just a simple house. A house built with the hopes of raising a family, Norm Phantom had always claimed, when he talked about his home.

Yet, there are houses, so removed, they have no call for the high moral ground. Such houses are regarded as being so strange, like the Phantom house with its twisty corridor of corrugated iron, it bestowed significant powers in the minds of Uptown. They claimed it would conquer those it conjured into its grasp. Just as Angel’s house exuded lust, Norm Phantom’s evoked terrible fearings of loathing from the great minds, who, like the black cockatoos in flight overhead, only saw it from a distance. People who never came to visit. It made your heart jump. They complained it sent the cold shivers running up and down their spines, just from looking at that sinister fortress of corrugated iron flanked by closed thickets of prickly bush. But they looked from a long way off, at the other end of that long muddy road from town. Crows flew around it at night they claimed. The greatest of all Uptown desires was to have the house and all the prickly bush flattened by a grader. Once and for all.

Everybody watched that black sympathiser Truthful with a close eye, while asking, ‘I wonder what he’s up to now?’ Each morning they saw him drive out of town. Slip sliding like a bat out of hell,
there he goes
, in broad daylight mind you, driving down to the Phantom’s place, worrying for that young Phantom kid Kevin, even after what happened to Gordie.

‘He should stay away from that place.’ Yes! This was right, people talk. But it seemed the man did not have a thread of respect for himself, for he went straight to the home of the most hated and fearful man in the Gulf, Will Phantom –
Wherever he was running amok again, who knows where
– and did not care who was watching him. All without a care in the world, even though he knew Will Phantom had dragged the whole town down, when he tried to stop the mine from going ahead. That whole business had caused people to go stark raving mad. A lot of important people in the government said he had no right to do what he had done. Now, the whole world stared at infamous Desperance, and all because Will Phantom could not cop it sweet, his bad luck.

This was the reason why Desperance needed an active policeman, an ideas man, someone like Truthful, who felt this was the big breakthrough in his years in the town. It required a lot of guesswork to know what was going on about the place now. So, since supposition was the prerogative of the police station, it was part of Truthful’s occupation to be Will’s second-guesser. Once Will Phantom heard about Kevin that would be it. He would come there as large as life, reeking for revenge. Truthful secretly surmised in his acts of seducing Girlie, that Will Phantom would not expect anyone to think he would turn up at his father’s house. Truthful thought he possessed a brave idea. He would be waiting when Will arrived. Ideas were very fashionable in Uptown at the moment, and he felt he had his ideas down pat. He was betting his last dollar on it.

The days passed full of cringe for Uptown, winding themselves up by watching Truthful’s mad driving to Norm Phantom’s house. The whole town rested on their fearful beliefs, pondering and waiting for a showdown of sorts. Would Will Phantom pick and choose what goose among them was going to cop it – a house fire, a fight, intimidation, terrorism?

Everyone in town knew the story, that Norm would not have a bar of Will, and so far, he had been the only person who could crush him. He had told the big-head off. He wanted nothing to do with him. Called him a no-good mongrel breed, talking about land rights and all of that crap. Yes! Norm told him what Uptown wanted to say, ‘We don’t want any of that Southern black rights activism stuff up here.’ Would Will Phantom return? Nothing would stop him now his father was away. Truthful did not rate a mention, for nobody would be able to defend themselves against the stash of guns and ammunition everyone knew Will had hidden somewhere in that monstrous tin castle they could see down the road. The great speculation about the explosives and equipment he had in his possession was dragged out of memories, and talked about again with interest bordering on paranoia, with new links to terrorism. There were things missing down at the mine every time there was a stocktake.

Word grew that Will Phantom even knew how to assemble an atomic weapon. He had stolen uranium in the area, from the locked-up mine at Mary Kathleen. He had just slipped over the fence and helped himself. It was idiotic thinking, for it was not possible. The uranium mine of Mary Kathleen, some few hundred kilometres away, was sealed, fenced, locked, and guarded. But who knows? Who knows these things anymore when people are living in such a complex world, and people do not talk, do not negotiate a fair deal, do not live by the rules, and will do anything to get what they want?

Blah! Blah! Blah! So on and so forth. People talked of the many foreign boats mixed up with the mining. They surmised a lot. For who knew what shipload of stuff Will had smuggled from black rights sympathisers, from pirate ships bobbing up and down in the moonlight, just kilometres off the coast? Anything! Anything!
Moored there while the stuff was rowed ashore probably.
Anyone could see for themselves what was really going on, they claimed
. He was going to create his own race war up in the Gulf.
Everyone knew that. Knew one had to be very careful with surface appearances, especially with a place like Norm Phantom’s, which could be mighty misleading looked at from the other end of the road.

‘Idiot! Bloody idiot!’ Girlie could churn Truthful around, like wringing him fingers-first through her old Simpson washing machine, while dragging him out at the other end, smack flat and drained. The sisters could tell that she was plain itching to stir him up. Ever since what happened to Kevin, she had become obsessed about old man Joseph Midnight knowing everything. ‘He sees everything! Doesn’t he see everything?’ The hundredth time. Every passing night, for half the night, the two older sisters had listened to her talking about old man Joseph Midnight.

Now, sitting in the kitchen, Janice and Patsy, both with great bags under their eyes and barely mobile because of Girlie’s pacing around during the night, wondered why Girlie, who was so quick to see everything, had not noticed the colour draining from Truthful’s face as she yelled his inadequacies at him, straight across the kitchen table.

Initially, all she wanted to know was whether he was getting any closer to catching those mongrels and when he never answered her, Well! that was that. It was they who had to eventually serve him some food because she refused. ‘Yer can go hungry,’ she claimed, eating in front of him, filling her own big mouth with a half piece of toast at a time. The moon sisters watched his olive-skinned face fade from red, to storm-sea grey. They thought it uncanny how the colour perfectly matched the corrugated-iron walls of the cramped kitchen. ‘Old man Joseph Midnight will be able to tell you, I am telling you,’ Girlie prattled on with a full mouth.

‘Then why don’t you ask him?’ Truthful finally barked at her like a dog breaking into her cruel world. The sweat running down his face sprayed over the table. Girlie jumped out of the way with her plate. She grabbed her cup, grinning now from ear to ear. She had at last found the crack, exposed the wound, forced him to feel her pain. There was no room for little boys around her world
.
‘Go, Truthful.’ Thinking he could just suffocate himself with his own tongue which was already swollen up with bundles of lies stuffed inside his mouth. No wonder he could not talk. But Girlie could grab someone’s tongue and shake it around just by using her bare words.

Then, with the bigger sisters sitting and eating, trying to pretend nothing was happening, she noticed he was clamming up again.
‘Anyone hear anything?’
He put his finger to his lips, indicating to Girlie, she should do the same. Truthful looked as though he had seen a ghost. He had seen old man Joseph Midnight coming out of the mud along the side of the road outside of the Phantom place this morning, as he drove down the road. He had been seeing Joseph Midnight sneaking about just about everywhere he looked lately. This morning, the old fella just stood there staring, mud dripping everywhere, and when Truthful looked at him, he told Truthful he was a bloody idiot.