9
The bugger of it was that he didn’t even like the ugly things. Frank’d brushed past the little table that held the sugar figures to get at a hornet that had billowed in and he’d misjudged it so that his hip had cracked against the corner of the table. The bell jar leant over and fell on the floor, where it smashed.
‘Cunt!’ he’d bellowed at the hornet, who drifted out through the door in a leisurely fashion. The dim glints of glass splinters were everywhere. The figurine of his grandfather lay on its side, split from the hand of his bride. His grandmother still held on to the hand, which had broken below the cuff of his wedding jacket. Rubbing the ache in his hip, Frank tried to stand his grandfather up again, but the base of his feet had flaked away and there was no balance left. The sugar was grey on the cut. Where the colouring had faded he could make out thumbprints, which made him stand still for a moment. He picked up the models of his parents and saw the thumbprints there too. Now that he’d seen them he couldn’t throw them away, and he laid all four of them down on their backs. After a second’s thought he gingerly high-stepped over to the sink and found a dry J-cloth, which he covered them over with, before putting on his boots and sweeping up the glass with a newspaper.
On the way to work Frank drove past the Blue Wren coffee shop. There was a fat, egg-like woman sweeping out the front. He imagined Joyce Mackelly in black and white, her thumb stuck out to the small traffic. Imagined her picture swept away by the breeze of his truck’s wheels as he passed by, knocking up a dust.
They spent the day loading disposable lighters and telegraph poles, and Frank’s palms became dry and calloused from pushing at the poles and landing them in the right place. The thick gloves he wore made his hands sweat like buggery. It was a long job, because half of the usual ship’s crew were off and the stand-in hatch man just said ‘whateveryareckon’ when anyone asked for his help.
Afterwards they arranged themselves in the pub, dried out and leathered from the sun, and Stuart talked loudly about trapping foxes, while everyone nodded gravely. Frank felt a fug behind his eyes that would turn into a headache. Pokey sat at the bar alone, his eyes on the television showing a documentary about female jockeys. Frank watched out of the corner of his eye until there was only a thumb’s depth left in the glass, before getting up and ordering one for both of them. Pokey nodded once in his direction, slid his empty across to him and took hold of the new glass. His attention went straight back to the television. Frank cleared his throat and smiled, but Pokey didn’t look at him and Frank went back to his seat. ‘He’s heaps,’ he said to Bob and Bob rocked back in his chair.
‘Yeah, he’s a real funny man. Gruff as two bulldogs f*cking.’ He leant forward again, talking quietly. ‘That’s how come we plan to murder the bastard.’
‘Huh,’ said Frank, not sure where this was going.
Stuart rubbed his hands together and produced a notepad. ‘Righto,’ he said. ‘It’s that time again, folks.’ He put on a crappy American accent that set Frank’s teeth on edge. ‘It’s Pokey Lotto time, come on down.’
‘What’s this?’ asked Frank, looking behind him at Pokey, who was easily in hearing distance. He watched him take a long slurp of his drink then set it down quietly, the skin of his face glowing blue from the television screen.
‘This is a long-kept tradition, Franko,’ said Stuart, a smile that Frank did not like hardening up his face. ‘See, why do you think we call Pokey Pokey?’
Frank shrugged. ‘His second name’s Poke?’
‘Because he keeps a bar-room fruit machine in his kitchen. That’s right. He uses it like a giant money box – keeps a jar of dollars in the fridge and puts ’em in, all his wages pretty much, they’re all in there.’
Linus joined in. ‘Few blokes tried to take that machine one night. Pokey got at ’em with a harpoon – right in the arse!’
Whether or not this was true, it seemed to tickle Linus so much that his laughter turned into a coughing fit and he grinned, tears of choke reddening his eyes.
‘So,’ Stuart continued, ‘what Pokey Lotto is, is a kind of syndicate. Each bloke thinks up a bit of a plot, right? A sort of robbery, murder-type scenario, about how to get to the money.’
‘Except,’ Bob came in, ‘the idea of the money seems to have flown out the window.’ He raised his eyebrows at Frank. ‘Now, we just plot the best way to murder the bugger!’ They all laughed including Frank, who felt his jaw ache from the strain of it.
‘I resent that, Bob,’ said Stuart.
‘An’ I do too,’ said Linus. ‘Now. Screwdriver in the eye – fastest way to the brain – won’t know what f*cker’s on him.’ Linus passed five dollars to Stuart who folded it carefully and put it in the envelope before writing down on his pad, ‘Linus – Screwdriver in eye.’
‘Make it an accident,’ said Bob, ‘late one night at the marina – tap him between the shoulder blades with a forklift. Drop a cargo on top.’
Each competitor handed over five dollars.
‘The end of the month we all vote, an’ the winner gets the envelope,’ explained Stuart. ‘Got any ideas on you, Frank?’
He felt all eyes on him. He looked at the suggestions on Stuart’s notepad that included past games. The last winner, circled in red said, ‘Alex – contamination of water tank with crapping.’
‘Snake in the coin jar. Death adder.’
Stuart grimaced, impressed.
It would have been good to be at home with no one else there.
‘That’s nice, Frank – good to get back to the original form once in a while.’
A tall aboriginal man walked to the bar and everyone looked up. It was time to go, but Frank’s body felt sluggish, like it might not have anything to do with him any more. The man put an arm round Pokey’s shoulder and they shook hands. Stuart banged his glass on the table. It reverberated in Frank’s head, made his teeth clench.
‘Just what we don’t f*ckin’ need,’ growled Stuart. Everyone ignored him apart from Linus, who laughed loudly, like he’d been told a joke. The man at the bar looked over, the white of one eye was bright red. He chewed something slowly and watched as Stuart stood up, holding his hands in fists by his sides. They looked at each other for a few long seconds but then Stuart sat down again and took a gulp from his beer. A hardness was getting into Frank’s back, had wound its way up behind his ears, and his arms twitched of their own accord. He wished Stuart would piss off. Frank drained his drink. He wanted another but if he stood up something bad would happen. The rest of the bar was looking and it made his face itch. The aboriginal went back to talking with Pokey. They both laughed and glanced at Stuart.
‘The good old days you wouldn’t get buggers like him in here,’ growled Stuart.
‘Go f*ck yer’self, mate,’ said Linus.
‘Enough, fellas,’ said Bob, not loudly.
‘Well,’ said Stuart, shrugging his shoulders and offering his palms up like a man put in an impossible position. No one responded and he downed his drink. ‘Pretty soon this place’ll be more black than white – ’specially if bastards like him keep on mixing it up.’ He nodded towards Pokey. ‘You know that, Frank?’
Frank felt sweat beading up his face. He should go. He thought of Joyce Mackelly’s face, rubbed grey by a wet thumb, up in the tree branches. He could feel people looking at him, wondering.
Stuart carried on, ‘F*cker was bedded up with one of them. A full-blood as well, not even a bitch he could f*ck white.’ There was a feeling like the place had been struck with a tuning fork, a ringing silence, then Linus made a low fast move towards Stuart, but before he reached him Frank had thrown his drink in Stuart’s face and slapped him across the cheek. Stuart fell off his chair and people all over the bar stood up. There was a low roar and Stuart came for Frank, his glass still in his hand. Frank’s fingers tingled from the contact with Stuart’s face, everything slowed down like a playback on the TV.
I’m going to get it in the face, he thought, just standing there, and I’ll welcome it. Then Pokey was behind Stuart and had him round the throat, and Stuart’s eyes bulged and his face was the purple of plums, green veins on his neck. He dropped the glass and Pokey dragged him to the wall with bear strength, held him up there with his forearm against his throat and shouted, ‘Now just you calm the f*ck down!’ Pokey’s face was so close to Stuart’s that they could have kissed. ‘If I hear another squeak out of you that I don’t like that’s it. For good.’
He took his arm away and Stuart bent over, hacking, a hand up to his throat. Bob slapped Frank on the shoulder and spoke in a voice that was pointedly cheery, ‘Not to worry, mate, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last.’ Stuart limped out of the door, doubled over. ‘He’ll be embarrassed enough about this to pretend it never happened.’
Pokey and his friend sat back at the bar as if everything were normal; the man raised a glass at Frank and Frank looked away. He’d just wanted to hit someone.
It was late in the day and the chickens were keeping an eye on him. He went inside and grabbed up the peelings and apple cores from the sink, took them out and flung them to the chooks. They pelted to it like it was roast beef. It was a worry feeding them. He’d bought a bag of chook grit and thrown great fistfuls of the stuff out, but was that enough? He’d shown them where the water was, had set them out a couple of dishes, picked up each hen and wet its beak from the dish, but they just quailed against his shirt and kicked, so he let them go. He found himself hoping he would wake up and they would both be gone, their clipped wings healed, flown away. It was lonely being the person responsible for their well-being. The way they looked at him as he moved about the veranda sometimes made him afraid, how they waited until the last moment to get out of the way of car wheels and seldom looked up at any noise apart from the feed bag. He walked past them, on his way picking up the old brown machete Bob had brought round. He shook it at Mary, said ‘Ar-har’ like a pirate. Mary looked back beadily and made a noise like an old door opening.
Bob had given him the machete along with a rake and a rusted incinerator. ‘To be honest, mate, I pinched it from here a while back,’ he’d said, planting it in a friendly way in the dirt by his feet. The thing was old and had ugly carvings on the handle, like something you might get on a cheap greetings card, birds and beetles dancing in and out of vine leaves.
He chopped down an armful of cane, just to get the feel of it. He tore off the thrash, while Kirk and Mary bothered about his feet, picking up bits of leaf and spitting them out again. With a pocket knife he split a stalk down the middle and a line of juice ran out. On that last holiday, with his mum still there, he had sat out by the cane in a tin hip bath of cold water, wearing his undies and his dad’s straw hat. A stem of sugar cane dipped in the water had made a cool sweet cud that he’d filtered through his teeth and spat out, into the water and on to himself. That thick smell of filter mud from nearby farms, richer than molasses, crappy and sweet at the same time. His parents – his dad with his summertime moustache, his mum wearing lemons on her dress – had sat on the steps drinking beer and peeling prawns.
With a stalk protruding out of his mouth, he took his machete inside to oil up and clean off some of the rust. He’d set it aside on a piece of newspaper when he heard a motor and, looking out of the window, he saw it was Linus with an old brown kelpie panting in the back tray of his truck.
‘How’s it going?’ Frank asked.
The old man smiled. ‘Thought I might as well drop by for a drink.’
Did you, now, thought Frank. ‘Beer suit ya?’
‘She’ll do.’
Frank fetched a couple and took them out to where Linus had sat himself in the sun on the steps. He didn’t say thank you when Frank handed him the beer, but nodded as if to say well done.
‘Just wanted to drop by and make as well you were feeling good about Stuart.’
‘Yeah, sorry for causing a scene there,’ said Frank, reddening.
Linus shrugged. ‘Caused less of a scene than I was about to. Sometimes you wanna stab the idiot in the guts. He’s not such a bad bloke, though, not really. We go back a bit.’ Linus settled himself back on his elbows, face to the sun. ‘Wife left him a couple of years back – left him with the two kids. Snot-nosed little buggers they’ve turned out to be – not surprising, though. He was only a kid himself. Anyway, he likes to get het up – you could swap Stephanie for every bugger’s name he gets mad at. She’s had no contact with those kids, Stuart neither.’
‘Jeeze, I’m sorry, I shoulda left it alone.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Like I said, you say those things one too many times in the wrong place, someone’ll put your eyes out – worse. He needs telling now an’ again. Stop that violence before it gets out of his mouth.’ The old dog started to bark. Frank could see its hackles were up and one of its eyes – the one that wasn’t already clouded over – showed the white.
‘Eleanor! Shuddup!’ belted Linus in a voice that made the dog sit down and then stand up again.
Keen to change the subject Frank said, ‘Been thinking I might get a pup. Be glad of the company.’
‘What? These bastards not enough for you, eh?’ he said, pointing his bottle at Mary who looked stonily back. Frank laughed.
‘Nah, mate,’ said Linus, ‘can’t have a dog out here – won’t work. Too much snakes or somethin’. Have a look at Eleanor there – she doesn’t like the place. Won’t get down outta that tray. She won’t drink the water here, won’t take the meat. You ask Haydon about it – he’ll tell ya. He went through three pups before they called it a day. One old dog too. They just keep going off. Might be there’s something in that cane or that bush. If there is, he sure likes a dog now and again.’ Eleanor whined, but with a sharp look from Linus she was quiet again.
‘Well, what about those two?’ asked Frank, pointing at the chickens who were now looking at Eleanor.
Linus drained his beer. ‘Chooks are fine. They get up in the trees. Goats are good too – I’ve seen people around here keep a goat or two. They’ve got horns, I suppose. Mad bastards anyways, with their yellow eyes, give me the willies.’ He banged down his bottle. ‘Anyway, hoot hoot, off I go.’ And he hefted himself up with the help of the post that held up the veranda. For a moment it felt like the place might collapse but in the end it was okay and Frank waved Linus off. He found himself alone again and tried not to look at the sugar cane.