‘Go on, you know what he has to say,’ whispers that dark wolf deep inside my chest. But if Pat tells me about the boat and where we are really going, he might spark a fire. The whole bush might go up, so I duck under the water. Hold my breath until my lungs are about to burst.
17 Bleed ’im dry
Walking out of the dam the breeze makes my nipples stick out like the rubber end of a pencil. I don’t have mountains yet, just molehills, but they are there. When Pat sees them he slips in the mud and splutters about. I offer him my hand again but he doesn’t want to take it. Gets his pants on real quick then heads off without me.
You know how some people say change is the only constant? Well they’ve never driven through the middle of nowhere like we are now. My crop top is still damp and it feels nice underneath my T-shirt, flapping in the wind. I look out at miles of nothing but red dirt and it’s like we’ve been travelling just to stay in the same spot. That’s the Red Queen theory of evolution. A polar bear changes from brown to white so he can sneak up on prey more easily but at the same time, that snow fox he’s after just got faster legs. Like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland everyone’s running just to stay in the same place and I’m scared we’ll never make it. Scared that Pat will finally tell me what he’s been meaning to since we began the trip. About where we’re really going.
Last pub on Pat’s run is called The Last Shout and that’s no joke. It’s the actual last place someone will hear you shout for the next 500 kilometres because after Karalee there is not a single living soul north, east, west or south. Pat says there’d been talk the Last Shout was getting a makeover and goodness knows everyone likes a transformation story. Like Sue-Ellen from Arkansas whose house burnt down in a fire because her pa smoked a handmade pipe in his bedroom, which also had a collection of newspaper cuttings dating back to 1964. To exacerbate matters Sue-Ellen had lost the piggery in her divorce and weighed close to 200 kilograms because she ate her feelings. But then the host with big hair and chipmunk teeth from Turning around Tragedy came and built her a new house with a mini-piggery out the back. The show brought a mobile makeover van because there was only a slaughterhouse and fishing store in the town. Couldn’t do much about the fatness so they just rolled her into an orange taffeta dress and slapped on some electric pink lipstick. Red carpet was laid down over the muddy driveway and she had to walk past all these people clapping. At the end they gave Sue-Ellen a baby pig with a big red bow tied around its neck.
To cut a long story short the Last Shout had been made over too, with a new pokie room at the back that Pat calls the Shrine. More machines than the Watering Hole in Wanteegi. Rows and rows all blinking and beeping like a puppy dog waiting to be thrown a ball, all saying, ‘Look at me, I’m the prettiest, I pay out the most, I can make it all happen, jackpot, jackpot!’ Mum said the machines had already taken away her and Pat’s future. I don’t know how that works if the future is always ahead of you, but she’d said it enough to make me think it was true. The future for her was living with Pat and having the great Australian dream—a house and a dog and a barbeque on Sunday with the men holding tongs and drinking beer while the ladies put out potato salad and tell the kids off when they try to grab a lamington before lunch. Somehow, all that was in the coins he gave to the pokies. And still Pat thought he could break one of those machines in, like a wild brumby only with magic numbers instead of a whip.
‘So tell me, do you feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?’
I didn’t make that up; it’s from a movie about a man who doesn’t wash very often. Pat didn’t answer, just walked through to the main bar in a trance leaving me to carry the last cardboard-cutout man inside. This one’s head accidentally got jammed in the back door and had a crease through his face like a big operation scar. Lawrence the Chinese publican was on the phone. ‘Nah, sorry, Joyce. Haven’t seen him,’ he says, looking at a dopey old man propping up the bar with his elbows. The man slaps a few dollars on the counter and walks out.
I set up the cardboard-cutout man; cap on head, beer in hand. Maybe Pat thought I was the one feeling lucky because he handed me a cup full of ten-cent pieces.
‘You think you can hear water? Maybe you can hear money too.’ He told me to sit at the back of the room so Lawrence wouldn’t see. It’s not the legal thing for kids to do and it’s against my moral code but I went anyways. Sat at the back of the room all incognito.
That’s when I noticed her. She had cold metal running through her veins. Hair pulled back so tight the comb marks left deep lines all the way to her scalp. Her spinal cord stuck out like an old skinny lizard. There was a massive two-litre bottle of Coke on the floor ’cause I guess her insides were so dried up she was always thirsty. I could see the cracks in her lips and dry flakes of skin she kept trying to peel off with her teeth. Cannibalising herself. Eating from the outside in.
She pulls the lever, sucks in her breath and pats the machine five times on the side. Three crowns fall into place and a waterfall of silver coins spills into the tray below. But this was dirty magic and nothing good would come from it.
‘Slit-eye Larry reckons he’s gonna reel in them rich chinks from China,’ she says.
Margie would’ve said she was cheap and nasty like a two-day-old pastie, jingling coins with her long bony fingers, turquoise nails chipped at the end.
‘But maybe I’ll just bleed ’im dry instead.’
I think she cast a spell on me, that woman. Her stale breath fills the room with a dirty haze and I can’t see much past my hands in front of me. I am going to swell up and suffocate with those words stinging me all over: ‘bleed ’im dry’. I also didn’t want the chinks from China to come here and lose all their coins because maybe they were a nice family.
Pat is still talking to Lawrence, oblivious to the disaster unfolding behind him, so I go around the back of the machines looking for their power source. The cables and wires are all hooked together with plastic ties that were stored in a broom closet. I put my finger on the switch and wait for someone to yell ‘freeze!’ But no one does so I flick it. And that’s when the witch screams her turkey gobble: I’ve taken her dirty magic away. Pat knows straight off the bat it is something to do with me. Quick as lightning he pulls me out of the broom closet and glares with those wild, furious eyes. Funny thing is, when Lawrence sees how angry the witch is he smiles at me. She starts jumping up and down shrieking at Lawrence that she’d just hit the $500 jackpot and the money was still coming out. But that is a down-and-out lie. I saw the numbers flashing on her machine and it only said $50. Lawrence is nodding his head while the witch keeps up her fake little hissy fit. Then she lunges at me with her cup of coins like some kind of wild attacking bird.
‘This is a crock-a-shit and youse know it! If you can’t keep your little Abo in line then I will!’ Just like with the white vultures on the bus, I don’t think it is the time or place to set things straight. And besides, witches like her don’t care. One black is the same as another to them.
Pat steps in front of me so she clobbers him instead, right in the eyeball.
For a quiet man Lawrence sure can shout when he wants. He points at the door and tells the witch to get out.