THE HEAT IS WORSE. YESTERDAY’S WIND HAS TURNED HOT AND UGLY, GUSTING in from the north-west, propelling fine particles of dust and carrying the threat of fire. The very country Martin is driving through looks sick: anaemic trees, spindly shrubs and, between them, more dirt than grass. He’s driven from the black soil of the flood plain into the Scrublands, a huge peninsula of mulga scrub where there is no soil, just the red granular earth, like an oversized ants’ nest. The land is elevated ever so slightly above the flatness of the plain, just a few metres or so, with its own rises and falls. The track is hard, corrugated and unforgiving, runnelled by long-ago storms and scattered with large stones; periodically the tyres throw one up to thump into the car’s floor. A track for four-wheel drives, farm trucks and hire cars. Martin takes it easy; Robbie Haus-Jones has warned him that not many come this way, that it’s easy to get lost among the erratic tracks and the featureless landscape; break an axle and it will be a while before anyone finds you. So Martin nurses the car and remains patient.
He’s not entirely sure what he’s doing here. The impetus to leave town has withered, the insensitive exchange with the boy Luke already losing its potency, already fading, soon to be consigned to some seldom-visited storeroom of his memory, to sit alongside his collected regrets and misgivings. Robbie Haus-Jones still wants a formal statement on the ute crash and Allen Newkirk’s death, but that only explains why Martin remains in Riversend, not what he’s doing out here, in this hellish landscape, on this godforsaken day, chasing the tendril of a story. Not the story he was assigned, something more elusive, more intriguing. Perhaps that’s it: the journalistic instinct is too ingrained, too much a part of him, compelling him onwards, even if he’s no longer sure he has the stomach for it. Perhaps it’s all he has left.
He passes through a fence line, rattling across a cattle grid. A pole on either side of the opening is adorned with the bleached skull of a cow, one rocking back and forth, animated by the punishing wind. Martin is pleased to see the skulls; he’s on the right track. He stops, takes a photo. Next he comes to a fork in the road, takes the left track. Another kilometre or so, and he reaches a five-bar gate. HARRIS, says the top sign. NO SHOOTING, NO TRESPASSING, NO FUCKING AROUND, says the lower sign. Martin climbs out, into the blast-furnace wind, opens the gate, drives through, closes the gate. Not much further.
It’s not really a farm, rather a semi-coherent collection of scattered structures, arranged as if dropped like marbles into a ring by some lumbering giant. The building material of choice is corrugated iron, crudely wired to wooden poles. The most rational structure is a cattle yard, roughly square, made of locally milled wood interspersed with some rusted iron fencing. The cattle yard is empty, of cattle and grass and any other living thing; even the flies have abandoned it. Martin steps out of the air-conditioned car, expecting the heat, not expecting the cacophony: the corrugated-iron sheets bang and squeal and shriek in the wind. ‘Jesus Christ,’ mutters Martin, wondering where to start.
He walks towards the largest structure, eyes narrowed against the wind-blown sand. It’s a crude sawmill, not used for years by the look of it. To the mill’s left is a more complete structure, albeit standing at a dangerous tilt and swaying in the wind. It’s a garage. The two wooden swing doors stand open, hanging from their hinges, digging into the dirt and holding the structure erect, like a house of cards. Inside the garage, its bonnet missing and its whitewall tyres flat, rests the carcass of a Dodge, its once-black paint turned grey and powdery, splotched with patches of rust like a pensioner’s hands. There’s a bitch with a litter of pups splayed across the back seat of the old car. The pups are suckling, but the mother is unconscious, imitating death.
Martin finds the house, largely indistinguishable from the other structures littering the bush block, except its walls are marginally more upright, the windows are shuttered, the roof boasts eaves overhanging the walls. And the door is shut. It’s a green door, paint flaking, wood exposed, patina emerging.
He knocks, noting the futility of the effort amid the thunderous day; the polite forms of society out of place in the Scrublands. The door has a brass knob. He twists it, shoves the door open and yells into the gloomy interior. ‘Hello? Anyone home? Hello?’
He steps inside. The light diminishes, the noise diminishes, the smell increases. It hits him as his eyes are adjusting to the gloom: sweat, dogs, rancid fat, farts, urine. An olfactory assault, even with the wind whistling in through gaps in the walls.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ There is an old man, naked, slouched in a chair, hand wrapped around his swollen member. Martin has interrupted him mid-stroke.
‘Shit—sorry,’ Martin stammers.
But the old bloke doesn’t seem at all fazed. ‘Don’t go. I’ll be done in a mo.’ And resumes his pumping.
Martin can’t bear it. He retreats outside, glad of the metallic racket, if not the heat. What a shithole.
A minute or two later, the man emerges, still naked, his shrinking penis red and dripping. ‘Sorry, mate. Caught me off guard. Come in, come in. Codger Harris, how are you?’ He extends his hand.
Martin looks at the man’s hand, looks at the man’s face. He doesn’t shake hands. ‘G’day,’ he says instead. ‘Martin Scarsden.’
‘Yeah, right,’ says the old bloke. ‘C’mon in anyway, Martin.’
Martin follows him into the hovel, looking anywhere but at the man’s sagging buttocks.
‘Sorry about the clothes-free zone. Too bloody hot for ’em. Pull up a pew.’ The old man flops back into the hammock-like chair, canvas stretched between a rough wooden frame, where he’d been pleasuring himself when Martin first entered.
Martin looks around, can’t immediately find anywhere to sit, grabs a milk crate, up-ends it, sits opposite the old man.
‘Shit, Martin, begging your pardon. Not used to visitors, forgetting me manners.’ And Codger Harris is back on his feet, remarkably nimble given his appearance. ‘What d’ya want to drink?’ He crosses to a bench, picks up a flagon and a couple of old Vegemite jars. Martin wasn’t aware that flagons still existed. ‘Not that there’s much choice. Chateau Scrublands, that’s about it. Care for a glass?’
‘Bit early for me. And a bit hot.’
‘Bullshit. Can’t come all this way and not sample the local produce. You like wine, Martin?’
‘What sort of wine is it?’
‘This? Shit, this isn’t wine, this is dynamite. But d’ya know anything about wine?’
‘A bit.’
‘So you know about terroir?’ The man has the French pronunciation correct.
‘Yeah. Good wine contains something of the land where the grapes are grown. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Spot on. Top marks. Take a slug of this then, the terroir of the Scrublands, liquefied.’ He half fills a Vegemite jar and hands it to Martin, pouring a full jar for himself.
Martin takes a sip, half gags, swallows anyway. It tastes like raw alcohol, except worse, like it’s stripping the enamel from his teeth.
‘Whatcha reckon?’
Martin coughs. ‘Yeah, you’ve captured the Scrublands all right. Note perfect.’
Codger Harris laughs, an easy amiable laugh, takes a slug, not flinching, and grins at Martin. ‘Truly shitful, isn’t it?’
‘You can say that again. What is it?’
‘Moonshine. Make it out the back. Got a still.’
‘Christ. You could sell it to NASA for rocket fuel.’
The old man grins with pride, takes another slug. His teeth are yellow stumps. ‘You prefer some weed? I got piles of it out back. Or tobacco. Got a bit of that as well. Cunt of a thing to grow—needs plenty of water, plenty of compost. Weed’s better. Grows anywhere. Even out here. Works better, too.’