Carpentaria (9 page)

Before the day Elias came and things changed, Finn’s cover was so strong that he could elicit spiteful scorn as easy as you could click your fingers, wherever he walked in town. The women hated him:
Don’t look, pretend you’re not looking, but there goes that old madman wasting his life again – just like a general fool.
Uptown matrons, who once looked like kewpie dolls, now voluptuously overfed to sustain their elephantine memories, whispered out loudly behind his back just to spite him from across the street. You could feel their jealousies moving up and down the streets of Desperance, leaving you breathless for days.

Silly old Finn never gave two frigs – he kept on walking, no, he did not walk, he shuffled in a zigzag fashion from one side of the footpath to the next on Main Street, bent with whatever hawks he had shot while hunting alone on the beach slung over his shoulders. Shooting hawks was a useless preoccupation and Finn spent a lot of time hunting the skies for them. The sun-frocked matrons in their sun-bleached dresses shuffled by, blood draining from faces like dried pears at the mere thought of having to cross right next to him on the footpath, and as they did, snubbing him with jaws atrembling and eyes glaring ahead.

But Finn’s life changed for the better as he stood in his mud-caked army boots on the beach that early morning when the mist was just starting to lift, and the air was still full of red haze. It was at that precise moment of the red morning, when he would commence firing, wasting army bullets on a group of hawks circling above the sea, as he always did, that he had first noticed the miracle. The birds too must take credit for their part in Finn’s miracle. Finn was affected with the dero shakes, wobbling one way or another to steady his position, as the hawks, looking down at him, casually flew out of range. It was a game the birds played with the army captain, flying in and out of range, up and down, occasionally one fell foul – a fluke hit – but for years they knew he could not aim straight enough to save himself. It was while he was jerking himself around in a haywire frenzy to keep up with the birds, screaming at them to keep still, switching the rifle’s sights from straight up to the sky to dead level with the horizon, that he made the discovery.

For a long time he watched the man walking across the mudflats through the muddy waters choked with reeds at high tide. Finn knew the lie of the land, and he watched Elias making detours past the decades of half-submerged car bodies – Holdens, Fords and semi-trailers laden with mud, homes of crabs and gluttonous man-eating sea fauna. Finn wondered why the man seemed unaware that it was the season of the box jellyfish with their long, stinging tentacles invisibly spread across the surface of the water. The man walking through the calm looked almost spiritual to Finn who stood transfixed to the spot, like he too was made out of clay.

Poor Finn. Crocodiles, sharks, gropers, stingrays, box jellyfish, stonefish, hundreds and hundreds of the invaders of childhood dreams swam around his mind. He heard his head pulsating with voices reminiscing over every single tragedy in Uptown fishing or beach picnic history. Voices saying they could remember it all, as though it only happened yesterday. Living next to the sea was like having tragedy for a neighbour. He watched, half expecting the waters to swirl at any second into a bloody vortex of the man being devoured by a giant sea carnivore. Until just as suddenly, as if out of the blue,
Finn tell yourself
, a distant military voice boomed from his memory,
fright was not right, or expected of the one and only Australian Army defence force personnel for miles around
. At that, Finn climbed onto the top of one of the dumped, empty diesel drums left lying around, for a better view through the sights in his rifle, in case he had to shoot.

He swore on oath afterwards that he had even heard music rising out of the waters from a pedal organ playing to him as clear as day. It was God’s music, he had said, and softly started to hum the bits he could remember. Everyone recognised the piece as Handel’s
Messiah
, exactly as Beatrice Smith played it on her pedal organ in the solitude of her house, whenever she was overtaken by spiritual light-heartedness.

The Captain could not contain himself any further and decided he would have to share the news with the whole town. Forgetting his limp, he ran straight through the mud up to the middle of town, arriving exhausted and out of breath, but still able to muster the herculean strength required to yank the rope of the town’s new bell into full ear-piercing peal, without permission. The large bell had, within months of its arrival, become rusted from the thick salt-moistened air, where it hung from its steeple on the neat, front lawn of the new Council Chambers.

The first response came from Libby Valance, the big, plump town clerk who really should have been the one to ring the bell in case of emergency. Unless, of course, on those days he felt down with the weight of middle age and heavy humidity, he wanted someone else to do it.

‘What are you doing with my bell, Finn?’ Libby Valance hollered as he came, striding in slow motion across the lawns, to stop Finn yanking the rope.

Finn stopped and stared, then ran off back towards the sea, unable to speak, gesturing with his arms for Libby Valance to follow.

In no time at all, with the children yelling out about Santa Claus coming to town, everyone in town was heading down through the yellow grass towards the beach. The children who had been drilled since they were just toddlers in nappies to the heavy ding-donging bell, charged out of their homes, knocking each other out of the way, and ran, yelling out, ‘What is it? What is it?’

The kids stood close to the edge of the waters to watch the strange man walking across the kilometres of shallow mudflats before they joined the deeper waters of the ocean behind him. ‘He’s got mud-curls
,
’ they yelled, and the women who had been transfixed by the sight of his bare thighs replied in muffled voices
,
‘That is because he is a miracle
.
’ It was the first time anyone in town had seen anyone with dreadlocks.

The more practical-minded amidst the crowd announced they were going to find a boat to rescue the man. Regardless of all else, they said, ‘Obviously he will need rescuing
.
’ They went off, the young men itching to partake in something like a sea rescue, the older men trudging through the mud, half knowing already it was going to be a futile attempt to find a boat in working order.

The trouble was that nobody went out fishing during the monsoonal season. All except Norm Phantom, the only real nautical man of these waters, and he was already out somewhere fishing the estuaries. It was the Wet and the town’s boats were sitting up idle on blocks having repairs done. Every motor had been taken apart, and left lying about on old newspapers in one hundred greasy pieces inside the fishing sheds around town.

At the waterfront, prayers were remembered and the crowd, some kneeling, said them out loud – Our Fathers, Hail Marys, Glory Bes, Acts of Contrition. By the time the man arrived safe on dry land, the talk on the beach had gathered to the height of wonderment. It was amazing. They agreed that nobody had ever seen anything like this before. For once something good had happened. Anybody’s wishes could come true. What a day. The town stood well back in a circle staring at the man lying face up on the sand and ordered:
Give him room. Give him room.
You could tell from the look in their glassy eyes that they had placed the richness of prophecy squarely on this man’s shoulders. It was only logical, on the face of things, something good had happened, but underneath the mask of appreciation, there was also a pot of apprehension bubbling away in their brains.

Time passed
.
‘For God’s sake you got to tell us who are you?’ Libby Valance, beckoning and pleading on behalf of the town, tried to persuade the unmoving man to speak. The man did not speak. He asked in every way he knew to entice a reaction. Suddenly, several others piped up, since they could not help themselves, and answered Libby Valance’s question. They said he was a saviour. The town clerk spun around and looked at them in disbelief. Libby prided himself in being educated. Blood drained from his abnormally red face. His wife, Maria-Sofia glared at him so hard, he bit his tongue and said nothing.

Libby Valance did not give up. He kept trying to work through the lunacy talking in the background, squatting with his portly stomach slumped on his knees, balancing himself awkwardly next to the man lying face up on the foreshore. He tried to be a comfort. A long time passed. The sun shone directly above the beach and Libby thought he was being singled out. How could the sun just shine on him? He was determined to keep his interrogation up until the matter was finalised. The wet man could not answer, but continued breathing heavily and seemed in a state of total confusion.

Yes, who are you?
irritated Uptown mimicked, losing patience. They wanted to go home. The whole situation of the perfect man lying before them, exposed on the beach, presided over by hovering, plump Libby Valance in sweating black, was just too perplexing a matter for anyone’s mind to chew over. They told Libby to get on with it because they wanted a good answer there and then.

Since Libby was useless, all eyes began casting around, looking for someone else to speak to the stranger when a voice said, ‘Get the bloody law and order man.’ All eyes fell onto Constable E’Strange, same name, Truthful: someone whom they had previously written off as more than useless. The Constable stood back, observing everything and everybody in his own tranquil way, loving the fact he was living in Desperance, and being totally ignorant of his reputation. Tut-tut! Poor bugger, a black hand signalled from the long grass:
Come quick and have a look at this
. The kids ran their index fingers in a circle around their ears.

Radar! Radar! All disgrace for poor Truthful. A policeman without a good pair of local ears? Perhaps it was best to be incapable of picking up all the whispering tongues hissing behind your back. More than a few years ago, the Constable had arrived in Desperance but the truth be known, nobody had use for a policeman anymore, so E’Strange had became very comfortable sitting down there at the police station doing nothing thank you very much. In his abundant spare time, the mild-natured law enforcer had created around the grey besser brick building beautiful rose gardens that Uptown women now liked to walk in and admire. He spent hours honing up his hoon town bribery skills with withered plant cuttings, to crash the treasured plant collections of all those slack-cheeked Uptown matrons. They had even strolled down to the police station in broad daylight to help him transform the barred cells into a hothouse for
Ficus elastica
and
Monstera
. The plants grew into jungle proportions of twisted vines. It had not occurred to Truthful that if the need arose one day, there was hardly any room left in the building for locking someone up.

Even now, Truthful did not recognise the vibes of the town against him. He just saw himself as part of the crowd. He had forgotten he once had a passion for crime. ‘Oh! Leave him,’ some woman said in a dry, acid voice, typical of the North. The word around town was not nice. Whisperings in the ear claimed he had been left to his own devices too long. It was plain to everyone that Truthful was not really interested in Elias lying face up on the beach, a complete stranger who had not said, nor satisfied anyone, if he were friend or foe to the town.

Truthful kept checking his broken gold Rolex watch, guessing the time. He longed to go back to his office, where he spent his working hours undertaking a personal rehabilitation course with a tax-deductable, mail-order counselling service which promised a one hundred per cent success rate at the end of thirty-six months at very little cost to his pay packet. At times, whenever he appeared out of nowhere, down among the edge mob in the prickly bush, trying to make friends, he would purge his conscience to the old people
.
‘I am trying to make a new man of myself,’ he explained. He talked about spiritual journeys, including self-hypnosis, exorcism, self-analysis.
I’ll kill the bastard if he tries any of that shit on me
, echoed the old people after he left. Above all, the Pricklebush people were scared about what would happen to them after being apprehended by Truthful. But listen! This man built for dealing with trouble said he had moved a long way from being a thug copper from The Valley in Brisbane. He said people from the prickly bush should think of him as a friend, like a true, rural gentleman cop. He said he was even thinking of changing his surname to Smith like everybody else in Uptown.

The situation in Desperance might appear bad on the surface but the law did not fall into tatters just because a Southern Queensland Valley cop could not fill the shoes of the old sergeant when Jay Smith passed away. A good man Jay, who had spent sixty-one years one month dedicated to the police service without missing a single day’s work until, after having apologised, he dropped dead. What a resignation. Everyone talked about it. Now, the numerous dynasties of Smith families kept lips zipped about the town’s sins. The town had ways and means to deal with pub brawls, rape, robbery, assaults, family violence and fraud among themselves. So, up until now, with it being obvious to everyone that Libby was doing such a balls-up of a job, Truthful was free to stand about, looking on with the rest of the crowd gathered around the man on the beach.

You could see how oblivious he was when the glaring started and the whispering began
.
A plethora of worries! A deluge of ill fate! There was no joy to be had in not having a proper policeman, and the algae man was still lying on the beach, and all of that hot sun was making people think weak thoughts and voices were raised. Well! Now everyone up the beach from the Pricklebush in the long grass could hear the consternation of Uptown and how they could go on.

What if the man is dangerous, contagious, riddled with all kinds of incurable diseases, a violent maverick, or a murderer or a foreigner trying to gain illegal entry?