Prohibited Zone (9 page)

‘Thanks.' It was a moment of surprising intimacy; maybe it was a gesture of reconciliation. The flesh was sweet.

The land started to undulate as we approached Port Wakefield and now was mostly covered in wheat stubble. The town was nestled among mangroves at the head of Gulf St Vincent. Population six hundred, average age, sixty-five, unless you counted the itinerants who worked on the strip of petrol stations that lined the highway outside the town, although most of them probably didn't even know there was a town beyond the highway. I pulled in to fuel up. Getting out of the car was like stepping into a blast furnace. The north wind was hot, dry and dusty. It was almost noon and the sun was reaching full strength. I stuck the bowser nozzle into the fuel tank and Kara wandered into the shop. A man filling up his car with petrol and dust at one of the other bowsers was looking at me. I saw him say something to his young son, who looked at me as well. The boy dived into the car and came out holding a notebook and pen. He came over to me.

‘Excuse me. Are you Steve West?' he said.

He was probably about ten years old and had a million freckles on his face.

‘I am, buddy. Who are you?'

‘Shaun. Can I have your autograph?'

‘What do you want my autograph for?'

‘You used to play for the Crows, didn't you?'

‘Yeah, for a little while. But that was a long time ago. You probably weren't even born.'

‘I seen your mark on tellie. Dad spotted you.'

I waved to his dad, who was still looking in our direction, a dopey dad-grin on his face.

‘Play footy yourself, Shaun?'

‘Yeah, a bit. And I go watch the Crows almost every game.'

Dad holstered the bowser nozzle, walked over and put his hand comfortably on the kid's shoulder. He carried about thirty kilograms more than he needed to. He had a chubby, sunburnt face with a couple of days' worth of straw-coloured stubble. His cheeks looked like a big fat paddock of harvested wheat.

‘How's the knee, Westie?'

‘Okay, mate. A bit creaky in the mornings.'

‘That mark of yours was quite something, though. I haven't seen a better one.'

‘Yeah, thanks. Sometimes I think it was worth a busted knee.'

I signed the kid's notebook with the signature I reserve for autograph hunters – an illegible series of loops – and went in to pay for the fuel. I grabbed a carton of iced coffee while I was there. Kara was still inside and must have been watching through the window.

‘Did that kid just ask you for your autograph?' she asked as we got back in the car.

‘Nah, I asked him for his.'

‘And?'

‘And what?'

‘Why would a ten-year-old kid want the autograph of an old bastard like you?'

‘I played a few games of footy in the early nineties. In the AFL.'

I was looking over my shoulder, checking that I could pull out onto the highway without a road train running up our arse.

‘Aussie rules?'

‘Yeah. AFL. Australian Football League, it means.'

‘Which team?'

‘Adelaide Crows.'

‘Are they good?'

‘They're better now that I'm not playing for them.'

‘How many games did you play?'

‘Thirty-eight.'

‘That's not many.'

‘I did my knee and wasn't any good after that.'

‘No good for anything?'

‘Not much.'

‘So how did you do your knee?'

‘I was marking the ball, you know, catching it. It ended up being voted Mark of the Year. I was a fair way off the ground, up on some guy's shoulders. Looked bloody good on TV. But I landed awkwardly and snapped the anterior cruciate ligament in my left knee. End of career.'

‘How tragic. Your big moment of glory followed immediately by your downfall.'

I pried open my carton of iced coffee and took a sip.

‘
I
certainly thought it was tragic.'

‘So, what did you do?'

‘I had a partially successful knee reconstruction and tried and failed to play footy again. After that I limped out of the limelight and went to university.'

‘What did you study?'

‘Mining engineering.'

‘And that is what, exactly?'

‘How to dig holes in the ground.'

‘Why that?'

‘I had a calling. I've always liked digging. I was king of the sandpit at kindy.' I thought about it for a moment. ‘I guess I like thinking in three dimensions. Beats the hell out of thinking in four dimensions, anyway.'

‘And now you're working at Olympic Dam.'

‘And now I'm working at Olympic Dam.'

‘Thinking three-dimensionally.'

‘Yeah.'

‘And digging holes.'

‘Yeah. One day it will be the biggest man-made hole on the planet.'

I took my eyes off the road and looked at her; she was eyeing me curiously.

‘You're a strange one, West.'

‘Tell me about you. I'm sure you're perfectly normal.'

‘I wouldn't say that.'

‘What would you say, then?'

‘People say I'm quite driven.'

‘Well, you're being driven now, so that's perceptive of them. What else do they say?'

‘A few say I'm a bitch. Others think I'm full of myself. I don't think they know me very well.'

‘What do people say who know you well?'

‘Actually, they also say I'm a stuck-up bitch.'

I laughed, and she gave a little chuckle a second or so later. We were on the last leg to Adelaide, heading due south across flat, dusty country that the summer had dried out and was busy turning into desert. The north wind was still blowing and there was a haze that was mostly dust but might also have contained smoke from grass fires on the plain.

‘So, what are we driving through now?' she asked. ‘Geologically speaking.'

‘Geologically speaking, we're driving through a boring-as-bat-shit dustbowl.'

‘That's not very scientific.'

‘Technically, if you're interested, it's called the Adelaide geosyncline, which about eight hundred million years ago was a dirty great chasm in the earth. Over time it filled up with mud and rocks and other lovely stuff, producing the prime real estate you see today. To the north you have your gibber plains, which have taken forty million years to form and, damn, hasn't it been worth the wait? To your left is the northern end of what the common folk laughingly call the Mount Lofty Ranges. About four hundred million years ago they were as mighty as the Rockies. Now they're barely above sea level. When the ice caps melt they might even be below it.'

‘They're still pretty, though.'

‘If you say so. Have you been down here before?'

‘Yes, a few times. But I've never stayed in Adelaide for more than a week. It's always long enough. I know three songs about Adelaide, and they're all about how boring it is. The second-biggest man-made hole on the planet, maybe.'

‘How long were you up there?'

‘In Woomera? Oh, I've been there off and on for a few months, visiting the detainees, particularly Saira. I've been helping her with her visa applications and things like that. But this last time I was only there for a week. With all the other demonstrators.'

‘Many there? They appear to have completely vanished.'

‘Most of them will be in Adelaide by now.' She looked at me. ‘I'm not as amateurish as you might think. I have a plan, you know.'

‘Great. Please don't tell me about it.'

‘Don't worry, I won't. We couldn't have you getting involved in something, could we?'

She was quiet for a long while after that, spending most of her time sending and receiving text messages on her mobile now that we were back in range. She wasn't missing anything by not looking out the window.

‘So, you don't have a problem mining uranium?' she asked suddenly.

‘Copper and gold, mostly. Uranium is just a by-product.'

‘And you're fine with it?'

‘Why shouldn't I be?'

‘Oh, I don't know.' She spread her hands in a mock gesture of ignorance. ‘Maybe that it could end up contaminating half the planet, or causing a nuclear holocaust. Little things like that.'

I shrugged. ‘My job is to make sure the mine doesn't collapse.'

She twisted in her seat to look at me. I kept my eyes on the road.

‘You know, for someone who digs holes you are pitifully shallow.'

‘Well, they
do
call me Superficial Steve.'

‘I bet they do.'

We eased our way into Adelaide in silence. She lapsed back into texting, her phone beeping every few minutes to announce incoming messages. Once she asked me where we were heading and I gave her Col's address. But we had run out of meaningful conversation.

8

C
OL LIVED IN
P
ORT
A
DELAIDE
, which lay north-west of the city centre. Originally called Port Misery, it had once been a mosquito-infested mangrove swamp. Now the mangroves were mostly gone and the banks of the Port River were mostly lined with concrete. Mosquitoes were no longer the most annoying creatures there; that honour belonged to supporters of the Port Adelaide Football Club.

The Port's unremarkable main street was punctuated at the end by a twenty-five-metre-high red-and-white navigation light. Beyond that, wharves attended ships from all over the planet, bringing in the latest shiny offerings from China and the odd illicit substance and shipping out wine and wheat. Tall grain silos lined the river to the north.

Col lived on Cannon Street, just a block from the river, in an old bungalow that had probably housed five generations of wharfies. The Port was still working-class, but it was changing. Townhouses were being built along the western edge of the river, and some of the old buildings had had face lifts and become cafes. A large, art deco building that had once been the South Australian home ground of the Waterside Workers Federation, for a while the most powerful and corrupt union in the land, was now a run-down, decaying theatre. But there were still more pubs than trendy restaurants and more King Gee shorts than Italian suits.

Col must have dropped his trailers at the terminal because only his flame-painted prime mover was parked outside his place, straddling the curb. His two teenage sons were kicking a footy around on the street, despite the heat and the fact we were still a couple of months away from the start of the footy season. One of the boys was wearing a Port Adelaide jumper and had his eyes on the ball, which had been kicked towards him.

‘I'm free,' I called. The lad leapt into the air to mark the ball, which he did with one grab. He took a few steps, dodged an imaginary opponent and kicked the ball hard and fast towards me. It went wide and I stuck out a hand, knocking it into the air and taking it in both hands as it came down.

‘You're getting slow, Westie,' called the boy.

‘You want to see how fast I can kick it into the river, Harry?'

He laughed. ‘You wouldn't make half the distance.' I kicked the ball back towards him; it went over his head and tumbled down the road.

‘Sorry.'

He laughed again and jogged off to get the ball, which came to rest in the gutter.

‘Bloody hopeless Crows player,' called out the other lad; that was Fred, brother of Harry.

‘Watch it, punk. Is your dad home?'

‘Yeah, just go in, Westie.'

I looked at Kara, who had been standing impatiently next to the ute, and flicked my head in the direction of the house.

‘Coming?'

I opened the flyscreen door and called out. A Labrador puppy sprinted around the corner of the entranceway, its toenails clicking on the tiles, and came to a sliding halt just inside the door. It was followed, somewhat more sedately, by a middle-aged woman in a very green dress and a not-quite-white apron, on which she was wiping her hands.

‘Come in, Westie,' she said. ‘Don't mind Warren.'

‘Hello, Mrs P. The dog's not really called Warren, is it?'

‘What's wrong with Warren?'

‘Nothing, I suppose. What's up?'

‘Just cooking, Westie. Got to feed the man. Can you stay for lunch?' She looked from me to Kara, who had come in behind me. The dog was jumping up at her, trying to sniff her crotch. ‘Hello, I'm Holly,' she said to Kara, holding out her hand. The name didn't suit her. She had the smoky skin, black hair and large nose of a Greek. When her parents arrived in Australia in the late fifties, barely speaking a word of English, they had given their only daughter an Anglo name to help her fit in. I'm not sure it helped; she'd told me once she had been called ‘Hollywog' at school. Kara shook her hand.

‘I'm Kara. Did Col bring someone with him?'

‘Yes. She's asleep in Fred's room. She's beautiful, isn't she? I told Col he has to stop bringing beautiful women home with him.' She laughed, the sort of laugh that showed she didn't have any fear that old Col would ever do anything he wasn't meant to, like have a bit on the side. ‘And, if he does, he shouldn't hide them in his fridge,' she said. ‘She was practically frozen. I had to make her a hot water bottle. Imagine that on a day like this.' She laughed again. There was always plenty of laughter in the Paddick household.

She picked up Warren and we followed her into her overheated kitchen, where a side of something was roasting.

‘Smells good,' I said.

‘We always have a big lunch when the man gets back on a weekend,' she said. ‘He's having a shower.'

‘I'd better fetch Saira and go,' said Kara.

‘You're not going to stay for lunch?'

‘No, thank you. Anyway, I don't eat meat. Fish, that's all.'

‘Oh, I have plenty of vegetables. And lots of mangoes for dessert. No fish, though. I could open a can of sardines?'