Blood River

by Tony Cavanaugh

  Still.

  Very pretty.

  I’m not sure if it was the ageist or the sexist comment that threw me. The last time I was sitting across from a young guy, I was seventeen and we were flirting, talking about going to the movies. I wasn’t equipped for this. This had not been part of Anthea’s 2019 orientation. I felt as though I had suddenly been transported from that seventeen-year-old girl to this middle-aged woman in a millisecond and that those intervening years were catching up to me in slow-motion waves. I felt disorientated and, for the first time, I felt my age. For the first time, sitting on a yellow plastic chair being interviewed by a boy for a stupid job at McDonald’s, I felt those twenty years and, as much as December 1999 had just bunched up against March 2019 with nary a gap between, those twenty years also felt like twenty thousand.

  I resisted the urge to punch him, which would have been a breach of my parole. Instead I smiled, got out of the yellow chair and left.

  —

  I WENT TO Bunnings and said to the employment officer, a guy in his sixties with old-fashioned tatts down his arms: ‘I worked for Bunnings for a week when I was seventeen and I was wondering if there might be any job vacancies.’

  ‘Okay,’ he replied uncertainly, as he looked at me. There was a pause, which I broke:

  ‘I’ve been in prison for the past nineteen years and I just got out and I desperately want to start a new life and I will work hard and I will do anything – serve coffee, sweep the floors, stock the shelves – and I will always be on time and never be sick. I know the robots are coming and in a few years’ time there won’t be people like me even asking for a job because those jobs won’t exist anymore, so if you could consider me, that would be great.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me why you went to prison?’

  We were standing in the timber section, planks of wood in all sizes on either side of us, a faint smell of pine and resin. ‘No,’ I replied.

  ‘Nineteen years; I can guess. All right. Give me the name of your parole officer and I’ll call him and say you’ve just been hired. Start tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll start now if you want.’

  And I did. He showed me where to clock on and off and gave me a uniform, which I put on excitedly and proceeded to work a shift that made me feel more independent than any time in my life. I was earning a wage. I could pay my bills. I could go shopping without having to ask Anthea for yet another loan.

  —

  INSTEAD OF CATCHING a bus, I walked the five-kilometre journey back to Westaway House. It was close to the Broadwater, back a street from the Gold Coast Highway; three modern two-storey buildings and one old, tumble-down wooden Queenslander, all joined together and hidden behind a tall brick fence with a sign out the front advertising weekly and monthly rates. The sort of place you’d expect to see a sign excitedly promoting colour TV. Inside were dark, narrow corridors and tiny rooms, smaller than my prison cell. Single bed and a wooden table. There were common rooms in each of the three buildings and open courtyards, concrete with a thousand tufts of grass and weeds and too-thin men and women stretched out in the heat in the door-stops or by the fence praying for a cool breeze. I’d only been there a day but I’d already counted four visits by the police. Nearly all of my neighbours were, like me, ex-cons and nearly all, unlike me, had a meth problem. Nobody slept. I don’t think any of the rooms had been cleaned since the 1970s.

  But I was free to come and go.

  It was going to be a good hour’s walk from Bunnings to Westaway, along the highway. Under a Caspian sky I walked past the neon of the Harbourtown shopping centre, smelling the sizzle of Big Macs and Whoppers, Indian food and tacos, hearing the bang-bang of death metal and rap as cars zoomed past me, headlights on, with the occasional Hey sister! I was Dorothy, off to meet the Wizard. Imagining myself lifted up into the sky, like she was. Off into the south-west were shots of lightning, towards the ocean, with the occasional sprinkle of rain but the heat was fierce and the drought had yet to break. There was a fairy dust of sunbeam before the twilight came and then it was finally dark, the highway lit with cars going in both directions, this way and that, as the overhead street lights, dull yellow at first and then blizzard white, zapped on.

  I felt someone. I turned around to see. There it was. A blue Mazda, driving slowly behind me.

  I was being followed.

  The Ex-Con

  I ASSUMED THE RENTAL COMPANY HAD RUN OUT OF WHITE vehicles, because a white Mazda would have been hard to spot due to its ubiquity. The blue car went past me on the highway then about three minutes later, it passed me again and then I saw it parked up ahead at a juncture in the road so, I guessed, as to determine which way I would go.

  I went into a Sushi Train across the road from a Centrelink office next to an abandoned car lot where two lanky girls who looked South Sudanese were playing makeshift hockey and sat and grabbed the cheapest plate. Through the windows, I could see the blue Mazda, about thirty metres from me, engine on, windows dark.

  This was faster than I’d expected. Maybe it’s me and 2019. Anthea told me that everything goes in rapid speed now. Think dial-up to wireless and apply that to everything you do and everything in life, is what she said. Not that I quite knew what she was talking about. I had last used the internet when I seventeen, the night of December 31, 1999, the night of Y2K.

  The thing about Mister Blue Mazda, who is undoubtedly the media, is that he doesn’t know it’s definitely me and if he takes a photo and says this is The Slayer twenty years on but it’s not, he and the newspaper will go down into defamation hell. He probably knows I am staying at Westaway House and he will follow me there and do some more research to ensure he is correct before he zooms back to his computer and sends through the confirmation.

  I couldn’t call Anthea. She was over an hour’s drive away and she had her own life. I didn’t have any friends, any support. I couldn’t leave the Sushi Train and walk around in circles for the rest of the night with a journo trailing me. I took out my phone, which Anthea had given me after I came out and dialled.

  ‘Bruce, hi, it’s Jen, you know, from today, at the store.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at a Sushi Train across the road from the Centrelink on the highway, just down, like a couple of Ks from the store.’

  ‘Don’t move. I’ll be there in five.’

  —

  ON MY WAY out of Bunnings, after my short shift finished, the old guy with tatts who had hired me came up to me and I thought Here we go but no, he gave me a slip of paper with a phone number scribbled onto it and he said:

  ‘Comin’ out is tough. I know who you are. I did the research. I’m okay with all that because it seems to me you were fitted up big time and badly. I did fifteen and I ain’t telling you neither. Here’s my number if you ever need to reach out, like AA, you know, we gotta protect ourselves.’

  —

  ‘THAT’S THE BLUE Mazda?’ asked Bruce as we pulled out of the side road.

  ‘Yes. It’s been following me since I left the store.’

  ‘It’s the press.’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘I’ll lose them,’ he said as he drove out of the car park like we were in a Hollywood movie and zoomed up the highway, back towards Harbourtown as the blue Mazda came out behind us and tried to catch up. Moments later, in the dark of headlights and a red light up ahead, he spun the car in an alarming one-eighty and drove over the concrete median strip and high-tailed down the opposite laneway, taking a quick left into the street next to the abandoned car park then a right, then a left, then a right, then another right. Then he stopped and stared into the rear-vision mirror. I was gripping the edge of my seat.

  ‘I used to be the getaway guy. Best of times, until I got done. Let’s go home, back to my place.’

  —

  I DIDN’T SLEEP. I heard the surf.

  Bruce lived above an empty garage, at the end of a courtyard looking across to the back of a Thai massage par
lour, The Healthy Dragon, which fronted the hectic four-lane Gold Coast Highway. From his balcony I could glimpse the Broadwater. The Thai girls ate noodles in the courtyard below, smoking and drinking Coke as he and I ate pizza from Vinnie’s Italian around the corner. I felt like I was on stage, in a Tennessee Williams play.

  We didn’t talk. We just ate. I was so tired, and eventually he said: You take the bed, I’ll take the couch, and I said: No, you take the bed and I’ll take the couch, and we argued about it for a while until finally I won and lay on the couch with a doona on top of me, listening to his snoring and thinking about the person who helped destroy my life. The person I would be meeting in the morning.

  The Slow Circling

  of Ravens

  AS I LEFT THE COURTYARD ONE OF THE THAI GIRLS WAS hanging out washing; it was six a.m. and already over thirty degrees. Total blue sky. Great for tourists but a symbol of continuing dread for locals, especially the few farmers left on the land.

  I saw her as I approached the vegan breakfast place on the highway, with a view across the water. She was there, waiting, her long black hair pulled back and wearing sunglasses, I suppose because she was one of the most recognisable women in the state. While I’d carried the days of my age into my face, she had not. She must have been in her mid-forties but she didn’t look any different from the last time I saw her, when she avoided my gaze during the trial.

  I sat down on the other side of the black marble table. A small vase of rosemary sprigs between us.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi. I’m Lara.’

  ‘Yeah. I know. I don’t think I could forget you. Thanks for meeting. I didn’t expect to see you,’ I said.

  ‘Why did it take you so long to make parole?’

  ‘I had an issue with my guilt, and thus I had an issue with atonement, and thus I got knocked back and it took me a rather long time to find out that I was in fact guilty. Once that happened I found atonement like one might find God. Why did you agree to meet with me?’

  ‘Let’s get a couple of things out of the way first and before we do that, can you stand up for me and also put your bag on the table.’

  I knew this was coming. ‘Sure,’ I said. After all she is the Police Commissioner.

  I stood. She hugged me like we were great friends in the collusion of a secret, like we were sisters who hadn’t seen one another for decades, like there was nothing antagonistic between us, nothing that might be a problem, an issue, like we were on stage together, dancing a slow dance and she put her arms around me and whispered, ‘This will only take a second,’ and she patted me down as if we were now lovers, her face so close to mine, I could feel her breath – inhale, exhale – of cinnamon and she said, ‘You know why I’m doing this, right?’ and I said, ‘Yep,’ and then, when she was confident there was no phone on me with a recording device, she stepped back and said, ‘Thanks Jen,’ and then she rummaged through my bag and found my phone and said, ‘Can you turn that off for me and would you mind removing the battery as well? Thanks Jen.’

  Twenty years ago she had also invaded my personal space by escorting me out of our house, her hand tightly gripping my arm, but I guess it would be impolite to mention that now. Back then, back when she got up close and personal, her breath smelt of vodka.

  Our waiter’s name was Herod. ‘Hello, beautiful people, what can I get for you this morning?’

  I got black coffee, short, she got black coffee, long.

  ‘We have the most super Thai omelette on spelt bread, ladies … the best breakfast on the Gold Coast.’ He spoke with a German accent, or maybe it was French. He was good looking. He made me wonder if I would ever have another partner and, for the merest of moments I had a flash of Rosie’s smile.

  ‘Why did you call me?’ she asked.

  ‘Why did you pick up?’ I asked.

  ‘You first,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You sure you don’t want the Thai omelette on spelt? It’s my shout. I just got a job. My first real job ever,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘You must be excited.’

  ‘The little things,’ I replied.

  ‘So,’ she said.

  ‘So,’ I said and took a deep breath. ‘He’s going to do it again. Now that the press have revealed that I’m on parole. He’s got a perfect opportunity to kill again and he will. That’s what they do. Kill and keep killing. The only thing that’s more important to them than killing is survival and while my jail-time forced him to stop, so you wouldn’t go looking for him, re-opening the case, my release allows him the opportunity to do it again. That’s why I called you. Because wherever he is, whoever he is, he is planning to do it again. I will take the fall. It’s a perfect crime. He’ll get away with it.’

  There was a long moment. She didn’t move but then took off her dark glasses and said:

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I’m innocent. You know that, right?’

  ‘I can’t make any comment on what the court decided; that’s not up to me.’

  ‘Not in your purview.’

  She smiled, looked away for a moment, then back at me. ‘At first, when I heard the name, I thought Kafka might have been your boyfriend.’

  I laughed.

  ‘I cannot, and the police cannot, respond or act upon crimes that may happen.’

  ‘What are you reading?’ I asked.

  ‘Huh?’ she asked, thrown askance.

  ‘What book is by your bed?’

  ‘The Crippled Tree,’ she replied.

  ‘Han Suyin.’

  Surprised, she nodded. And then, because I knew the book and the story of Han Suyin, she became embarrassed.

  ‘It’s not because …’

  —

  I LEFT THE rest of the sentence hanging. None of her business, but she just saw through me.

  This all came about after mum died. When I felt an obligation to understand, come to terms with, to rationalise, my mixed-race heritage and, in particular, my Chinese sensibility.

  —

  ‘NO,’ I QUICKLY said, ‘it’s not because Han Suyin was half-Chinese and half-Western – it was her mum, yeah, she was Flemish? – and that she wrote about the agony of being neither here nor there, in one place or the other or … I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I can be such a smartarse and pretentious and please forgive me. I love Han Suyin, especially A Many-Splendoured Thing; I have read all of her works and are you sure you don’t want the Thai omelette on spelt?’

  —

  I HAD TURNED my back on Chink-World, which is what I called it in times of self-hate or maybe it was self-pity. After mum died I felt guilty, that I really had been a bad daughter. That she deserved more. The left-over marriage thing was really just the pointy end to her protective need towards me. She was only being what a mum should be, striving for what she thought was best for her daughter. And I stomped on it.

  So, in an effort to atone by actually reading about her values, what shaped and formed her, I picked up a book by another part Asian woman.

  —

  WE ORDERED THE Thai omelette on spelt and Herod was very happy and I said, in an effort to deflect the awkwardness between us: ‘So, Herod, if you don’t mind me asking, where is that accent from? France?’

  ‘Oh no, I am from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.’

  We both did a double-take as we each had a weird but flimsy connection to that speck of an island. Which I discovered much later.

  —

  ‘WHAT MAKES YOU so convinced there will be more killings like the ones you were convicted of?’ she asked in a diplomatic skating-around of my guilt or innocence.

  ‘The same reason that made you drive down from Brisbane to see me. Because he can, before they put me back in prison.’

  ‘You’re not going back to prison.’

  ‘I am. Unless we catch him first.’

  Widows

  ‘SHOW ’EM IN,’ SAID COWBOY RAY.

  They had walked through the main entrance, a
little nervous, despite the angry righteousness of their cause. Parliament House in Brisbane, like all such establishments of power and law, was quiet. That’s the first thing Lynne and Jacinta and Becky noticed as they walked down the thick-carpeted corridors to the office of the Attorney-General, being led by his advisor, a slightly nervous guy in his late twenties wearing an ill-fitting light grey suit. ‘Follow me,’ he had said and they did, almost tippy-toeing along the corridors, every now and then catching a glimpse into an office where people sat staring at screens or talking in hushed whispers. This is government? they thought, as the advisor led them around a corner and said, ‘Wait just one sec,’ and vanished into an office. They could hear muffled voices and he then re-appeared and said, ‘the minister will see you now,’ holding open the door to Cowboy Ray.

  He stood up from his desk and greeted them. He had a massive beer gut and a shock of red hair and wore cowboy boots, white moleskin pants and a blue-and-white striped shirt. Lynne, who grew up in Ararat, in the Victorian Western District, who went to parties at wool sheds, where all the boys would turn up in their white Holden utes, dressed exactly like this, as if it were a bloke uniform, almost recoiled but she, and the others, had things to discuss and get done.

  ‘Lynne, Jacinta, Becky, I hope you don’t mind me calling you by your first names, have a seat. Do you want some tea or coffee or water?’

  No thanks, we’re all good, they said as they sat on the couch.

  He left the desk and dragged a chair to sit in front of them with a sudden look of despair. ‘I got your letter and I want to thank you for expressing your grave concern about the recent release of Jennifer White and your anger at the decision made by my parole board. I share your concern and your anger and it embarrasses me that the parole board made such a terrible decision. Against my instructions, I might add.’

  ‘She should be back in jail. She should never have been released,’ Jacinta said a little more loudly than any of them expected.