by Max Bolt
…clack. clack. clack. The sound of the train drags Mason, sweaty and disoriented, back to reality. The train slows into a station. The hiss of doors. People off, people on. A young girl sits three seats in front of Mason.
The memories of Afghanistan come at will. The pills Mason left in the office keep them away. Doped up on the pills he can look at the nightmares like they belong to someone else. The pills are the core of the treatment for his post war traumatic stress disorder. Post war traumatic stress disorder – a tidy name for a condition that the public and medical profession cannot comprehend. And the pills? Well they don’t treat the illness, they just make it invisible. On the pills, the illness goes into hibernation, off the pills, the demons come out swinging.
A group enter from the adjoining carriage. Loaded up with Macca’s bags, they use the handrails to swing into the downstairs section. Five of them, dressed in bomber jackets, caps the wrong way, and pants ten sizes too big. A gang. An urban pride of lions. They sit, two in front of and two behind the girl, and the fifth, too close beside her. The lions have isolated their fawn.
She be fine.
Like don’t your mummy ever tell you not to travel alone on the train? It be dangerous.
Yeah. Real dangerous. Cause of people like us.
You might get robbed or raped or something.
Raped. I reckon she might like that.
The one next to her, a ringleader of sorts, strokes her hair, and she pulls away. She is barely fifteen and her fear is palatable.
What’s a pretty girl like you doin’ alone?
She won’t be alone long bro’.
Yeah, she’d be lookin’ for some. I reckon I’m gonna…
Ringleader touches her leg. She stands to leave but they have her trapped. One of them snatches her bag and empties it; makeup and hair brush and phone with a Hello Kitty cover land on the floor. She starts crying. Begging them to let her go. They close in. They sense their kill is at hand. They–
“Let her go.”
Ringleader turns to face the strange man in the isle. Some kind of dorky office worker with a briefcase.
“You have a death wish or something mista?”
“No,” Mason says, “but you’re going to leave the girl alone.”
*
Despite their collective experience and intellect, the senior management teams of most major companies are largely dysfunctional. Ego, pride, and self-interest. They bicker and backstab, while expecting a culture of teamwork and cooperation from their subordinates.
Craig sits at the head of the long boardroom table, his direct reports arranged down both sides. Head of Operations, Head of Marketing, Head of Finance, Head of Safety, Head of Human Resources (a good one that, people as resources; to be exploited like copper and iron ore), Head of IT, Head of Strategy, Head of this ‘n that and everything in between. They all have their heads down, flicking emails and texts on their mobiles. Everyone is eager to escape this annoying weekly ritual.
Craig despises these meetings. The departmental updates. The confessions of poor performance. The finger pointing and blame shifting.
“The restructuring program,” the Head of Finance, The HOF (not Baywatch – Numbers-watch) begins, “is on track.”
The HOF passes around several spreadsheets. The lives of hundreds of impacted employees reduced to numbers and charts on a page. The Head of HR helpfully clears everyone’s conscience by stating the program is being conducted by the rules; adequate severance packages, the right conversations being had, and counselling and outplacement services for every impacted employee. All of it conducted fairly. A nebulous word, fairly, it very much depends on whose shoes you are in.
“It was the right decision,” Head of Human Resources says.
“Was it?” Craig cuts in. He can still see the faces from his intranet search last night.
“Well yes,” The Head of something or rather remarks, “for the viability of the Company.”
Craig shrugs and the conversation continues around him. Shifting from the annoying redundancies to other business. Sales and profits. Customer numbers and bad debts. Reputation and legal matters. Strategic acquisitions and divestments. Credit ratings and debt levels. Each member of Craig’s leadership team is well skilled in tailoring their narrative to what they suspect Craig wants to hear. But the talk makes Craig nauseous.
“I declare this meeting closed.”
They stare at him.
“What?” Craig demands, “this meeting is closed. Off you go. Go and manage whatever the fuck it is you manage.”
The Heads of everything and nothing hurry obediently out of the room. Alone in the large boardroom Craig holds his head in his hands. Ironically, it is precisely this impulsiveness that his father wants from him.
Well son, that was something. Now just redirect that animal instinct slightly, and you’ll be eyeing off your old man’s job soon enough.
“What am I doing?” Craig mutters to the empty room.
*
Mason looks at them. They’re young, make-believe tough, propped up by the false power of the group. Mason considers his odds. Against one or two or three of them – not bad – if all five pile in he’s stuffed.
“You got no business here mista. You best get back to work before we go to work on you, yeah?”
Ringleader has the stage and the others nod and snicker.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Mason says, “just leave the girl alone.”
Ringleader looks at the girl.
“Well I’m afraid that she’d be ours.”
The rocking of the train intensifies Mason’s nausea from his pill withdrawals. He is shaking and struggling to focus. He feels the demons returning. But when he sees Ringleader’s hand go to the pocket of his ten-times too big pants, Mason’s instincts kick in. You spend years engaging the Taliban in Afghanistan you get perceptive to certain actions. What’s he got in there? Gun? Knife?
“You’re on dangerous ground mista. This is our place.”
Mason dips and glances out the window. The graffiti ruined warehouses rush by in a blur.
“Well I hate to break it to you son but it ain’t much to write home about.”
Ringleader points to some graffiti scrawled in black texta on the inside of the train.
“You know what that says?”
Mason screws up his face in mock thought.
“Nothing. It’s scribble.”
Ringleader pulls his shoulders back making himself tall.
“It says we own this train and this town and everything in it.”
Mason raises his eyebrows.
“Really? Just let the girl go.”
Ringleader shakes his head.
“It says we own her too.”
Mason feels the anger coming now. The pills used to suppress it. But without them the demons gather unchallenged.
“Look,” Mason says, “I’ve had an ordinary day and I’ve got things to do. Just let the girl go and I’ll get on with my business and you can get on with being king of whatever pretend shit you want to be king of.”
The others get in on the act now.
“He’d be lookin for a ripping.”
“We got the thunder and the lightning and we gonna piss down rain on this mo fo.”
“Is that a warning, some kind of threat?” Mason says, “say it in English and I might understand it.”
“Mother fu…”
One moment Ringleader’s hand is empty, the next it is full of a knife. Mason steps back and the blade flashes by his face but the returning swipe cuts his arm. The young girl screams and cowers against the window. Mason swivels as the knife zips forward again. He avoids the blade and uses the kid’s momentum to ram him head first into the train wall. The kid flops on to the vacant seat, unsure which way is up and which is down. Mason ducks a blow from another kid and catches him with a left that knocks him back three seat rows. A third tries where the others have failed and Mason knocks him down with a short right and
straightens him up with a knee. The others pause and see reason; what is pride against this. This isn’t a normal office worker, it’s Jean-Claude Van Damme in disguise.
The train is coming to a stop and the gang quickly gather their fallen mates. They back out of the carriage shouting hollow insults from the train platform.
“Mo fo…”
“Gonna kill you man.”
“Get you and your mother and your sister too.”
Full of adrenalin, Mason snatches up the Maccas bags they left behind and hurls the food after them.
“You forgot your lunch. What’s wrong? Aren’t you hungry anymore?”
Fries and sundaes splatter over the platform. Then the train is leaving and the gang are strutting and shouting and making hand signals that Mason does not understand.
Mason returns to the lower cabin. The girl has gone, probably unsure which is worse, the try-hard bomber boys or the deranged office worker. He sits down, angry and on edge. He breathes deeply, working to get his rage in check. He thumps the cabin wall and slaps his face. He did not want any trouble. He never does. Trouble just has a way of finding him. And without his medication the anger got away from him.
“Leave me alone,” he says out loud, “leave me alone or there’ll be trouble.”
It is then that Mason sees his arm is bleeding. He wraps his tie around his forearm; tourniquet and elevation, standard military response to a laceration. Then he notices the Ringleader’s knife and a mobile on the floor. Mason picks up both and flicks on the mobile. A screensaver of some gangsta rapper appears, Pitbull or is it Lil Wayne, 50 Cent maybe. Mason shoves the knife and phone in his pocket. He takes his brief case and gets out at the next station.
The street outside the station is a ghost town. The heat has forced everyone inside. But he sees the blinking medical centre sign – Kingswood Family Medical Care – we bulk bill all procedures.
“Get meself fixed up. Then get me job back.”
*
Fitch is inside his office reading last night’s incident report.
Break and enter (“B&E”) North Street, B&E Paulo Street, B&E Cromley Street, B&E… B&E… he skips to something different; Domestic Disturbance (“DD”) Link Road, DD, DD… he runs his finger down the list, DUI, shoplifting, bag snatch, domestic assault, property damage, drug possession…
The summary of last night’s crimes is six pages long. Just another night in the Wild West of Sydney. Another night of the poor ripping off the poor. At least rob the East, Fitch thinks, it is a bit of drive but you get far better bang for your buck in Rushcutters Bay and Double Bay (it is called Double Pay for a reason), and the residents are so caught up in their millions, they won’t see you coming.
“Happy Birthday Chief!”
Nate Ferguson enters Fitch’s office. He is tall with blond hair and an unassuming grin. With just two years in the force he is fresh enough to think the world is essentially a good place. Give him time, Fitch thinks. But he knows the world may not give Nate time. You think the world is good, the evil you have overlooked sneaks up and hurts you.
“Is it?” Fitch responds.
Fitch had hoped to make it to at least lunchtime without anyone realising.
“Any special birthday request Chief?”
“A cloak of invisibility.”
“Oh come on chief. You’re only as old as you think you are?”
Nate, despite his youthful blinkers, is a smart kid. One of the smartest Fitch has been paired with. And Fitch is responsible for keeping Nate safe. Youth has its advantages, with speed and agility and reflexes, but it is experience that keeps you safe.
Nate sits down opposite Fitch.
“Bad bloody fires chief.”
Talk of the fires is all over the station. An extension of the media driven hysteria.
Three dead.
I heard it was five.
Fifty houses gone.
More like seventy.
Entire suburbs razed.
Gonna be worse this afternoon.
Deliberately lit.
Bloody arsonists.
Bloody murderers.
Lock 'em up.
Isn’t that our job?
Not in this heat – ha ha.
Fitch glances out the window. The wind is up already from the West. Ash is falling in the carpark.
“Reckon the heat will keep the bad guys indoors?” Nate says as he leaves.
Unlikely, Fitch thinks.
Alone again, Fitch puts the incident report in his drawer and as he does he glimpses a faded newspaper clipping. The paper stirs a sense of guilt. He does not want to go back there. There is nothing good back there. But he must. It is an annual sense of responsibility. An annual trip through purgatory.
He picks up the clipping. The paper is fifteen years old to the day and has turned yellow with age.
Young Officer dies in supermarket standoff
The headline takes Fitch back to a late night St Marys supermarket. Fitch sees the face of the young officer, barely older than Nate is now, and a masked thief with a shotgun. The guy on checkout is shaking so bad money is falling on the floor as he fills the thief’s bag. The young officer, Fitch’s partner, is close to the action with his hands raised. Fitch is off to the side, too far away to be useful. It is, ironically, Fitch’s birthday.
Fitch knows the young officer, for all his apparent bravery, has realised an inevitable truth; that police school, with all its text books and carefully scripted real life situations, is a load of bullshit. Because when you’re confronted with a sawn-off shotgun in the hands of a madman, the real world is a fluid and dangerous place.
The offender is high on drugs and the drugs create the illusion of invincibility; that he is bigger than the world and above the law. And holding two officers at bay with a shotgun strengthens the illusion. Fitch, as the senior officer, has a choice to make. Does he talk the lunatic down or take him down? The passive or the aggressive. A bit of the Dalai Lama or a bit of the equalizer Philippine President Duterte. The thief came into the shop with a shotgun, what did he expect to happen? But Fitch really does not want to fire his gun. You fire your gun and things get messy and unpredictable. And he genuinely believes that he can talk this guy down and everyone can just walk out of this. It is his birthday after all – right?
Wrong.
The world does not work that way. You can control your own actions but not the actions of others. The young officer, the kid Fitch has been assigned to protect, makes a choice of his own. He goes for his gun. Big mistake. Fitch sees the movement and rushes forward. The offender sees it too and swings his shotgun around. The kid has the speed of youth but the shotgun is faster. The crack of both barrels can be heard all the way down the street. The young kid’s hopes and dreams end up leaking out all over the lino floor of the dismal supermarket. A harsh lesson in choices leading to choices leading to death. And the unpredictability of life’s evil.
Fitch blinks the visions away and stares at the dated newspaper clipping. Fitch’s own birthday is a reminder of his own ageing but also of the young officer who does not get a day older.
Fitch is distracted by his phone. He answers and the female voice is soft and barely there.
You didn’t say goodbye.
“I did. You were sleeping,” Fitch replies.
How’s your birthday?
“Shitty.”
It’s hot outside.
Silence.
“How is it today?” Fitch asks.
It is a stupid question. His wife is dying of advance stage MS. She knows this and she is in constant pain.
Shitty. Did you have breakfast?
“No.”
Silence again.
Come home early tonight.
Fitch hangs up, returns the clipping to his drawer, and steels himself for the day.
Chapter 3
Mason Turner spent six years in the Australian armed forces, two of those on the ground in Afghanistan. What he experienced there was bad,
it was a war zone, that was to be expected. What he experienced on returning home was worse.
They call it reintegration. Not to be confused with re-interrogation. It entails the reintroduction of returned serviceman to society. The disentanglement of the military past for a smooth transition into peaceful society. The very fact a process exists beyond temporary financial support suggests an issue somewhere.
But to understand Mason’s reintegration to society one must first understand his exit. Don’t judge based on what is but rather what was?
Twenty-five years old, unemployed, wide-eyed and green, Mason responds to an Australian armed forces advertisement and is blown away, figuratively, by a glossy military open day. All tanks and guns and Humvees and surface to air missiles. Tough movie talking sergeants; all Bravo 1 Niner, Roger this, and Alpha that. All high tech and cutting edge and beyond the dreams of a carpenter’s apprentice. Why fix people’s floors when you can be in charge of all of this.
A month later, despite the protests of his then six months pregnant girlfriend, Mason finds himself in a twelve month military training program. Surviving the cold, surviving the heat, surviving days without food, surviving hand to hand combat. And having survived the surviving, he learns how to tell a terrorist from a non-terrorist from a would-be terrorist. How to fire a machine gun, pistol, rocket launcher, anti-tank mortar, surface to air missile, stun grenade, flash grenade, bang grenade, and on the off chance things gets up close and personal, how to use a knife. How to sew up an injured buddy, how to sew up yourself, how to keep your head down and cover your arse. A thousand how to’s that are all simple and fun in the make-believe battlefield of outback Australia.
For Mason, joining the military was a simple choice; getting paid to play skirmish with some like-minded twenty somethings, why wouldn’t you? And what are the chances of Australia ever going to war again? Australia is a peace-loving nation, isn’t it? We’ve learnt the lessons of WW1 and 2, Korea, Vietnam, and dare we say it, Desert Storm in Iraq. Haven’t we? Really, what are the odds of Australia resorting to military conflict in this day and age, slim, Buckley’s–
