Time speeds mercilessly as the chaos unfolds.
Higgins calls Jason to help drag Charlie’s slumped body, but Jason cannot hear his words. He can only hear Miranda sobbing. She’s struggling with some uniforms, pleading to be allowed to go with her father. Ethel is standing alone in a corner, looks almost catatonic. As he follows Higgins through the door, Jason fights every instinct he has to run.
TWENTY-FOUR
‘He’s had enough.’
The constable is used to wielding power over the powerless. He’s kicked a drone, taken money from a dead man’s wallet. But that façade can’t breathe in this cell. Stinking hot during the day, but its light never penetrates the concrete. Nothing lives in this desert apart from the stale air that’s smothering him with grim reality.
‘Higgins, I mean it. He’s had enough.’
The constable is too young to carry a gun. But not too young to have smelt the corpses of teenage junkies, or given comfort to the brutalised, who will never know any. None of it compares to this.
Blood and sputum have formed a grotesque portrait on the hefty telephone book. It shudders and buckles beneath the force of white knuckles. The prisoner grimaces before collapsing.
‘I’m not prepared to lose my job, Higgins.’
Milestones flash through the constable’s brain: graduation, proposing to Tina, buying their first home. And it’s all about to fade under the flashing lights of the press.
‘Did you hear me? I won’t lose my job for you.’
Higgins pauses and laughs, reeks of old bitterness. ‘You don’t know jack shit.’
The constable’s beady eyes are reptilian, ever watchful of predators. He knows now that Higgins is the worst kind of predator. Loved by his colleagues, but secretly feared. They’ll cheer as he throws a torch, and when the scorched earth is cold they will lie for him.
Exposing the demon that lit the inferno is unthinkable.
‘What about the videotape?’
‘We’ll doctor it, constable.’
Higgins ploughs his right foot into the prisoner’s side, drawing cries of pain. ‘Ruined my family, you fuck!’
He spits onto the prisoner’s forehead. ‘We’ve got unfinished business. Haven’t we, boy!’
‘Higgins, for Christ . . .’
‘What about the man your father killed? He had a family too.’
Higgins pauses, plants his hands on his hips. ‘What did you say, boong?’
Charlie knows his body will never recover. He’ll be a cripple, if he survives.
Take as much blood as you want. But I won’t give you a drop of my dignity.
Higgins kicks Charlie’s head in like a football. Fragments of his teeth become airborne.
‘You know what, old man? It wasn’t just Matthews who had fun with your daughter. I left a big pile of red feathers inside her apartment yesterday. Should have seen her and Matthews take the bolt.’
The concrete stinks of urine and vomit. But Charlie notices there’s something else. It’s more pungent than death. This place is a vacuum that sucks all humanity, all hope.
I promised Carys I’d look after our baby.
Charlie tries to lift his ballooned head from the stench. But he doesn’t have to any longer. They’re telling him.
It’s time. Mother is so beautiful; tears burn her face as she holds out her hands to him. He’d only ever seen photographs of his father, but he knows him.
Carys is no longer the shadow he said goodbye to in that hospital ward. She’s still got those wild auburn tresses and that heart-shaped smile.
Our baby’s grown.
Did the best I could.
So hard without you.
Higgins puffs on a cigarette, takes a swig of the Jim Beam. He’s enjoying the warming sensation, the lightness creeping through his bones.
‘What’s he saying?’
Higgins laughs as the constable holds his breath to look into the old man’s bloody face.
He swings around when he hears the cell door, but it’s too late. Matthews’ gun is already pressed firmly against his neck.
‘Matthews, mate. This is another Tipat.’
‘Tipat was a paedophile, Higgins.’
‘This piece of shit destroyed my old man.’
‘That doesn’t give you the right to kill.’
Jason turns to the constable, who’s gone sickly white. ‘Check him.’
He feels for Charlie’s pulse. Shakes his head.
She’s been coming to this watch house for the past ten years. Could come for another ten and still it would remain unknowable. She loathes the artificial light, the industrial smell.
The innocents only become hardened, the shipwrecks push their hate closer to the surface.
‘My name is Miranda Eversely. I’ve come for my father, Charlie Eversely.’
‘You need ID.’
Miranda produces her driver’s licence for the camera.
‘What was the prisoner’s name again?’ The female voice on the intercom is indifferent.
‘Eversely. Charlie Eversely.’
The pause makes her nervous.
‘You have to wait.’
The Aboriginal flag outside Parliament House is tattered and faded, a child who has known only neglect. It’s been left outside to suffer the elements, acknowledged rarely and even then, grudgingly. But Miranda expects nothing more from those who co-opt the most enduring symbol of Aboriginal sovereignty, while simultaneously denying that Aboriginal sovereignty lives, breathes.
George Street ends in a mouth of traffic. On one side is the Parliament, three storeys of sandstone, surrounded by green spikes. Iron lattice is rusted like an old relic. Scraggly palm trees grow inside the fence. They too are withered and tired. The most destructive gamblers don’t lurk in the casino. They’re here.
Parliament faces the Botanical Gardens. A calm oasis. Between heaven and hell, cars come in and out of the mouth, those inside ignore the demonstrators. They live in a parallel dimension, a place where Charlie’s murder only exists as thirty-second sound bites.
Ethel stands across the street, outside the Queensland Club. Built for wealthy, white men in the nineteenth century, it scorns its youthful neighbours. Huge columns look like something from America’s Deep South.
Miri, everything’s going to be okay.
I’ll take care of everything.
I promise.
The National Australia Bank logo adorns the blood bank caravan that’s parked outside the Parliament; donors swim around it like tadpoles. Inside a fruit stall two Chinese men sit slouched in deck chairs, expressionless faces watching students dawdle to the nearby campus. The students hasten their pace as they approach the demonstrators. All decline invitations to sign the petition.
The Socialist Alliance flag is draped across a makeshift table. Those behind it are the final vestige of activism in this place, a university for the ‘real world’. A small media contingent has turned up, but today they have a different tack. They stand watching the speakers, silently, even respectfully.
Miranda’s brain is newspaper on microfiche, reeling over death without meaning. Without cause. Daniel Yock, the beautiful young dancer who didn’t live to see twenty. Mulrunji Doomadgee. Arrested for singing.
Perhaps both would have lived had the recommendations of the Royal Commission been implemented. Those voluminous reports now just gather dust, along with the principle that arrest should be an option of final resort. Years ago, another version of those inside the sandstone promised to breathe reality into the vision of the Royal Commission. But the bureaucrats took the Commonwealth money and built new watch houses, jails.
Miranda looks back towards the demonstrators. Why did it have to happen to Dad? Dad believed in people. He’d learnt how to get rid of his ange
r, made his peace.
He was a teacher.
Even as a child, Miranda knew that police were to be feared. That word appeared like a boil in the atmosphere, on the occasions that Charlie had a swollen mouth and painful limp. She’d seen them waiting outside the front door. Enormous men who seemed to give life to Jack and the Beanstalk. As she grew older, Miranda learnt of the true horrors of that time.
Bjelke-Petersen was determined to run the black settlements as prison camps. Cops regularly tortured the radical blacks who said ‘no more’. When Miranda grew up, Charlie told her of the black men who had taken ‘accidental falls’ through the windows of police stations. Black women who had been raped by cops. His own beatings. She knew then, it was a war.
Had Charlie been wounded while fighting in a military uniform, he would have received treatment for his psychological injuries and, perhaps, he might have been paid compensation. But there was nothing for the black men and women who suffered all kinds of scars at the hands of their own government. Their own police force that was supposed to keep them safe.
She thinks about the new Premier sitting in her office with the Police Commissioner, their phalanx of advisers in tow. Their faces will still be dressed in synthetic composure, even though the press conference ended an hour ago.
‘Mr Eversely’s death is being investigated by experienced homicide detectives and members of the Internal Investigations Branch,’ the Premier said. But Detective Senior Sergeant Andrew Higgins would not be stood down during the investigation. The Police Commissioner had deemed it inappropriate. The Premier concluded: ‘I have complete confidence in the men and women of the Queensland Police Service.’
Miranda hasn’t been surprised by Labor’s surge in the polls since the Premier’s death. The Queensland Daily regularly prints photographs of the statuesque blonde on its front page. She wonders if it bothers Belinda Field that so much attention is placed on her looks, and so little on her competence.
The loudspeaker has an ugly pitch, the voice an unwelcome intruder.
‘I first met Charlie at the Embassy in ’72.The two of us were just kids. But we learnt from the best of them. Uncle Chicka, Gary Foley, Dennis Walker.’
Wiry and grey. In other circumstances, he’d be enjoying watching grandchildren grow. As he looks into Miranda’s face, she feels his thoughts.
We paid such an enormous price.
‘When I was growing up, the mission manager used to come to our home unannounced, to give my parents the run around. We all felt the humiliation, but did nothing. Everyone was just so disempowered. But when I got to the Embassy it was like a religious awakening. They refused to bow to anyone. That was where Charlie cut his teeth.’
The crowd cheers in earnest. They relish the memories of leaders who danced on air, fought without fear.
‘When we finally got a Labor Government in Queensland, we thought things would get better. At last, we’d be treated as citizens of this State.’
A long and bony finger points at the Parliament.
‘But nothing changes under Labor – they’re just as bad as the mob they replaced. It’s been one week since our brother was murdered and not one of those responsible has been brought in to line. In fact, they’re still going to work every day.’
His voice is thick with anger.
‘If one of those coppers had died, do you think our brother would have been allowed to walk away? No way! Brothers and sisters, I’m sick and tired. Sick of our people dying needlessly in police custody. Tired of racists walking away with impunity.’
The speaker’s voice is a barometer of the crowd. The brother radiates the frustration that’s become palpable. Police stand at the end of George Street. Locked jaws silently plead for the demonstrators to light the spark.
Ethel watches Red Feathers flying above the topmost branch of the old grey tree. She pleads with him to come to her. As her eyes bore into his sadness, she knows. A coke bottle soars through the air, and she knows.
Powder keg’s been lit.
The child’s screams pierce the speaker’s words. A woman holds her hand on his scalp to stem the bleeding. They’re surrounded so quickly they’re barely visible through the jungle of arms and legs. The air is dense with anxious whispers that suck all reason, all control.
The police are an endless stream of toy soldiers. Each row followed by another. A young black man writhes on the ground like the body of a snake whose head has been severed. A man in overalls nurses a broken nose, while his friend holds back his forehead.
The police dogs’ snarls should have made them cower in fear. But the crowd doesn’t blink. A young woman runs through the gate of the Botanical Gardens. The rock she’s carrying is the size of her head, but the weight has no impact on her agility. She throws it into the vortex.
Miranda’s feet are fused to the bitumen.
Stop, please stop. Dad wouldn’t want this.
The little boy is now sobbing as blood streams down his face. The woman has disappeared. Miranda’s hands are on his shoulders before she’s even conscious of her own movement.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll be okay.’
She sees the fear in the child’s eyes.
‘We have to find your mum. Where did she go?’
Miranda hears the collapse of the baton. Feels a lightning bolt of pain scorch the back of her head. She’s trying to reassure him, but her head is swimming.
His cries disappear into the darkness of her mind.
Red Feathers clutches Ethel’s wriggling body.
‘We gotta do something,’ she says.
Her heart aches when she sees the tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘You’re losing it, aren’t you? I knew it. When I saw you this morning, I couldn’t see your feet.’
Ethel stares bitterly into the crowd. A woman in a Socialist Alliance T-shirt is nursing Miranda’s head in her lap. Another is standing above her, speaking into a mobile phone.
‘You know what this is, don’t you?’
He nods sombrely.
‘That’s right. That fuckin’ boundary is still here.’
He looks slowly around the crowd and back at Ethel.
‘Don’t worry, bub. I’ll be more prepared next time you come. All of us will be.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Her fingers are gentle, caressing Miranda’s forehead like water gliding across a stone.
‘I don’t want to.’ Mum’s voice is just how she remembers. Soft and pleasant on the ear. ‘Charlie, can’t we stay just a little longer?’
Dad looks up at the giant sitting on the other side of her hospital bed. His arms are resting on the floor, head pushed against the ceiling like a bag of tomatoes.
‘We have to go.’
Mum kisses her softly on the forehead. Smells of sandalwood.
Dad runs his hand across her cheek. ‘Baby girl, I want you to remember that if you open your eyes, you can find a reason for hope.’
He bends down and kisses her cheek. ‘Don’t ever stop believing in people.’
Miranda imagines a shooting star, a million explosions inside her skull. The mattress is hard, the sheets too thin. Her nose catches the hospital smell. Chemicals to clean, to heal, and, when all else fails, to soothe the dying. Her memories of Carys’ time in hospital are silhouettes of reality. But in her heart, Miranda has always known that Mum’s final days should have been spent sitting in her cherished garden, surrounded by family. Not in a cold and sanitised place, filled with strangers and machines.
She doesn’t know of any Murris who are comfortable in hospitals. One of the old uncles from Meston Park had even absconded soon after receiving surgery for throat cancer. He bolted with a drip still in his arm. Miranda can understand his reasoning. This place is for the sick, the dying.
Staring through a veil of sleep.
But still, I can see her sadness.
She’s holding something deep within, sits on the bottom of her soul, dragging her down.
She hears the snapping of surgical tape and feels a sting in her hand.
‘Can I get you anything?’ The nurse has a shrill voice.
‘No. I’ll be fine, thank you.’
Ethel’s hand is on her forehead. It’s clammy and Miranda can feel her anxiety, as though its essence has been shifted into that one hand.
‘Everything is going to be okay, bub. I’ve taken care of everything.’ Her voice dwindles to a whisper. ‘Me and Red Feathers had a good talk. You don’t know him, yet. But he’s a clever man. Bub, he said it’s okay for me to tell you.’
Miranda might be groggy, but that doesn’t stop the fear pulsing through her veins. Memories are flooding her mind, but they have no order. It’s as though she’s surrounded by reels of film that have been spliced, jumbled. She knows only the scenes, but has no real grasp of the story. Remembers the fighting, the fear, but no recollection of how she arrived here.
Ethel’s eyes are glazed. She’s wearing the same expression from the day she told Miranda about her son. The newborn who died and has since grown into an adult.
‘Everything is going to be okay, Auntie,’ Miranda says without believing it to be true.
‘I’m the one who used to say that to you, when you were a little girl.’ Ethel’s sob is air escaping from a bottle. ‘You were very sad for those first few months.’
Miranda’s mouth is parched. Ethel gives her a glass of water.
‘Pretty scary time.’
‘They were, Miri, but we had some good times too. When I came to Brisbane, a lot of the mob thought I was a Johnny Come Lately. The only one who didn’t judge me was Charlie. I bet you didn’t know that about your dad?’
‘No.’ Miranda is not sure if she’s ready to talk about her dad just yet, but Ethel goes on, as though she’s speaking to herself.
The Boundary Page 25
