The whiskey tasted as good as it looked, a delicious remnant of the past.
‘Not bad, eh? One of the perks of being an old man …’
Not really knowing what to say, I nodded a wordless agreement.
‘Is your little girl okay?’ Jacko asked, quickly getting us back on track.
I snorted some of the precious whiskey out my nose.
‘What? What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing, it’s just that, ah, she’s not mine. I’ve no idea who or where her folks are, or if they’re still alive. She kind of adopted me and a mate when we found her out on the land.’
Jacko swore aloud. ‘She was alone out there?’
‘Yeah, she’s as tough as old boots.’
We fell silent. I rolled some more tobacco; Jacko poured a second round. Despite his age, he had no trouble keeping up. The far-off sound of voices had grown louder again. Accompanying them were strange thuds and thumps that sometimes followed weird grunts, pained cries, more cheers from the crowd.
‘What is that?’
‘That’s how the Creeps keep this place safe. If you want a fight, that’s where you go—you tap someone on the shoulder and get to it. No one gets hurt who isn’t willing, and the meatheads can dump some of their macho bullshit. And if watching is more your thing, you can choose a seat and enjoy the show instead.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding …’
‘You’d be surprised how effective it is. Women and kids get sent to the line first, same as it ever was. People like you and me, we’re not much of a priority. And everyone knows what happens when you cram a bunch of blokes together, especially when there’s fuck all to do.’
I couldn’t help smile. ‘Buggery and biffo, eh?’
‘Boys will be boys. At least the Creeps’ way stops anyone innocent getting hurt.’
I could picture the fights—desperate, brutal acts carried out by lost men turned dangerously mean through no fault of their own. And I could picture the crowds—crazed, blood-hungry, lost, as savage as the fighters.
‘Not for me,’ I said.
‘Nor me.’ Jacko once again held his glass aloft. ‘To the health of civilisation.’
I met his toast. We drank deep. Jacko poured two more.
‘She’s a good kid, your Ruby. Even if she isn’t really yours. But if you don’t mind me saying, I hope she gets shipped north soon. This is no place for the young.’
From what I had seen, life in the camp seemed cruel and harsh and unfair. In fact, it seemed exactly the same as life everywhere else, no better and no worse.
‘Is it really that bad?’
Jacko looked at me coldly. ‘I’ve helped too many of my own kids board that train. I smiled while I saw them off, each and every time, even though I knew that I’d never see them again. I was glad—glad—that they were leaving. It meant they could have a chance above the line.’ He spat into the dust. ‘We don’t live here, we survive.’
I looked around at the endless shantytown sprawl. I marvelled at the idea of a steady supply of food and water. I listened to the muted brawling that was designed to keep me safe. I remembered life at home, those too-frequent days of hunger and thirst. I tried to imagine what it must have become, now that the people who had made it more than a mere town were presumably gone. I didn’t want to picture them being rounded up by the Creeps, or out on the road, or lying dead somewhere, gunned down while trying to defend their own. And I couldn’t stop thinking about Tobe rotting in his cell.
Something inside me shifted. ‘Jacko, how long’s it been since you set foot out there?’
I waved my arm to encompass the blind, thirsty beast the land had become. He didn’t answer me, didn’t need to.
‘I could get used to it here,’ I said defiantly.
Jacko’s face crumpled and he fell quiet. Staring into the middle distance, avoiding my eye—he obviously didn’t like where I had decided to hang my hat. I shuffled in my chair, embarrassed. Jacko ignored me completely. With much chagrin, I got to my feet.
‘Sorry. And sorry about your kids.’
He looked at me, smiling sadly. ‘Cheers. Just look after your own, okay? Make sure she doesn’t miss the breakfast bell—it’ll be light before you know it.’
I smiled, glad that my apology had been accepted. ‘You bet.’
‘Well, goodnight then.’
‘Yeah, you too. And thanks again for today.’
‘No worries,’ he said, waving me away.
Sleep came easily, but the morning sun disturbed it too soon. I rolled over, already sweating, my back aching, my leg burning. For a blessed moment, I had no memory of where I was or what had happened to me. I stared at holes in the ceiling that now let hot sunshine in, rather than cold moonlight.
All too quickly, everything came back. I groaned low; a mournful sound.
‘G’day, Bill.’
I turned my head. Ruby was sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling wide, looking bright. She showed no trace of her troubled sleep, was more on top of things than I could ever hope to be.
I suddenly felt old.
‘Yeah, g’day,’ I mumbled.
I groaned again, let my head fall back. Bells tolled somewhere in the distance, counting out the breakfast hour.
‘Bill, we’d better go.’
I groaned a third time.
‘Useless bastard—Tobe was right.’
At the mention of his name, I decided that I could cope with whatever had to happen next. I buttoned up my coveralls, slowly got to my feet. Ruby passed me my stick and an almost-empty canteen. I finished off the canteen, felt a little better.
The urge to do my thing overwhelmed me.
‘Uh, excuse me a sec.’
Ruby smirked.
Bursting at the seams, I limped outside as fast as I could. I stopped dead; there were people everywhere, streaming toward the courthouse. Privacy was a non-existent thing—I ground my teeth before spotting an empty, collapsing building on the far-side of the alley. I barged through the crowd, stumbled into the ruin, tried hard to ignore the ripe stench of waste, near tore my coveralls, managed to find some relief.
I tottered back into the alley, smiling stupidly.
‘You right?’ Ruby asked, sitting outside our shack, perched on the broken stool we had found.
‘You bet.’
‘Well, come on then, shift your arse.’
I did as she said and we followed the ravenous throng. Our fellow holdouts were quieter than I had expected; only a low murmur of morning conversation disturbed the quiet air. We shuffled down alleys, passed ruined buildings, the crowd constantly growing thicker.
Ruby’s eyes scanned back and forth, checking every face. I was chilled by the sheer number of bodies, by the stink of resigned desperation they exuded. I pitied them, starting to hate the fact that I was now one of them.
‘Jacko!’ Ruby called.
Overwhelmed, I was pathetically grateful that she had kept a look out.
He was heading towards us, moving against the flow. I felt a guilty pang for the offense I had caused the previous night. When he was close enough that I could see the bloodshot whites of his eyes, he tipped me a wink to let me know everything was alright.
‘G’day.’
‘G’day.’
Jacko waved away a fly, slowly bent at the knee.
‘Ruby, how are you this morning?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Good one.’
He stood back up, frowning slightly.
‘You folks had better hurry along,’ he suggested. ‘There’s already quite a queue.’
Ruby shot me a dirty look. I swear that I blushed.
‘Right, then.’
I pushed myself hard to keep up with Ruby. Once or twice, she looked back, making sure that she hadn’t lost me. Each time, I heaved a wheezing sigh of relief. And still we kept walking, swept along by the torrent of people.
We hit the ruins of the manicured garden encircling the courthouse. A vast mob
of dispirited holdouts met us; there were thousands of them, more than I had ever seen in one place.
Ruby froze; a rabbit in headlights. Slack of jaw and wide of eye, I crashed into her.
‘Sorry.’
She didn’t answer. For a weighted moment, we looked over the crowd together. At some fuzzy point in the distance, it changed from a formless mass into a series of incredibly long single-file lines, each one terminating at an open-faced canvas tent.
There were dozens of lines, dozens of tents.
‘Ruby, you okay?’
She didn’t answer. I looked at her. She was staring at the courthouse, her eyes hard, and her little-girl wonder completely gone.
‘Tobe …’
I followed her gaze. Lining the courthouse steps were twenty or more Creeps, their hands on their guns. When I caught the eye of one of them, he smiled an evil smile.
‘Ruby? We should get a move on.’
This time, I led the way. Ruby shadowed me, only relaxing when we reached the end of one of the lines and disappeared from the Creeps’ sight.
‘You alright?’
She scooted ahead, looked over her shoulder, winked.
‘No worries.’
We waited, the heat baking us in our skin. I cursed myself aloud—neither of us had thought to bring any water. That was my fault, not Ruby’s—now that Tobe was gone, I had to be the adult, to be the one in charge. A black cloud of self-doubt hung over me as we kept waiting. Soon, thirst was consuming us. I apologised profusely to Ruby, but she sulked and looked anywhere but at me.
When our turn came, we couldn’t finish our water fast enough.
Bloody blow-ins is what Jacko labelled us when we made it back to our shack and I realised that we had now run out of water until the next morning.
‘Useless dickheads,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.
But he still wrenched himself off the broken wooden crate that sat outside his door, inviting me to take his place. I gladly sat down, my leg burning once again. Ruby sat cross-legged on the ground next to Jude, started scratching him behind the ears. Jacko disappeared into his shack. For a long time, he made a clatter-and-bang ruckus as he rummaged around for something.
‘I’m thirsty,’ Ruby said.
She didn’t complain, but simply noted the fact. Even so, her words cut me deep.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’ll learn, it only has to happen once,’ Jacko said, reappearing.
He set down a battered tin tray bearing two steaming cups of billy-tea and two unopened canteens.
‘Here, make it last.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure as shit I am.’
Ruby took a canteen, looked at Jacko, smiled softly, and muttered a thank you. She cracked the canteen and had a small sip, being careful not to guzzle it.
‘Cheers,’ she said.
‘You’re welcome.’
Something startled Jude—he bounded to his feet and darted down the alley, barking madly. Ruby stood up, stretched her back, and gave me a strange look. I said nothing, confused as always.
‘Back in a sec,’ she said, rolling her eyes.
She ran after Jude, disappearing around a corner.
‘Kids,’ Jacko muttered with more than a little affection.
He held up one of the cups of tea.
‘Fancy a cuppa?’
Struck dumb, I nodded.
‘Don’t be embarrassed. Not that many folks ask an old man the time of day anymore—it’s nice to meet some that do.’
‘Well, thanks again.’
The tea was bitter and earthy, but it was still tea.
‘Jacko, you don’t know how long it’s been,’ I said, sighing deeply.
He laughed. I took another sip. It was exquisite, divine—I actually smacked my lips. Once Jacko passed me his leather tobacco-pouch and his gleaming lighter, the picture was perfect—I rolled some tobacco and lit up, grinning like that ridiculous cat in that strange story from long ago.
‘You alright?’ Jacko asked.
I laughed quietly, unable to help myself.
‘Yeah, I am. I just …’ I waved in the air, stupidly and enthusiastically. ‘I just didn’t expect it to be like this.’
I leaned against the wall of Jacko’s shack, waved a fly away, sighed with a kind-of satisfaction.
‘So, what happens next?’ I asked with a smile.
Jacko snorted.
‘This happens—we sit around and wait. Or if you feel like it, you can try hawking your wares and flogging your labour down at the square, or volunteering for a work detail.’
‘Fair enough.’
Twenty
And so time in the camp passed, the days bleeding together until one was no different from another. I settled in, tried to adjust. Every morning, Ruby and I joined the hungry hordes’ march to the courthouse. Every afternoon, we did our best to stay out of the heat. Every evening, we fell asleep with the faint sound of fighting in our ears. Every day, the Creeps guarding the courthouse refused to let us see Tobe. Dispirited, Ruby and I would shuffle away. We would spend the rest of our day spinning our wheels until the sun went down, either sitting around our shack or loitering in the square or hanging out with Jacko.
After a while, I hammered into the wall of our shack the rusty nail that my hat had hung upon back home, carrying out such a mundane task with almost ridiculous reverence.
Jacko quickly went from being a good neighbour to a good friend to a good mate. On our second day in the camp, he warned us to stay away from a stall offering ‘bush medicine and tooth pulling’, which was run by a frantic young guy who, when he wasn’t actually drunk, was suffering from the DTs. That same day, Jacko also didn’t hesitate to point out where the men and women walked the walk and worked the oldest profession.
He showed us around the rest of what he called ‘the real camp’, introducing us to the ‘decent’ traders, advising us on whom to avoid, explaining the market’s strange rules and customs. As he showed us around, he told tall tales and outrageous stories, each one filed with bittersweet detail, black humour, a hint of regret. He knew everyone and everyone knew him, if not by name then by face. Those who made a living on their backs seemed to know him the best.
Despite his easy familiarity with pretty much everyone, Creeps included, he couldn’t get us in to see Tobe.
The market itself was a frenetic thing, the square buzzing day and night with people offering seemingly everything—the simplest scrap salvaged from the graveyard of junk; extra food and water; scavenged keepsakes and mementoes; sly grog, bush tobacco, wild weed; the sheer grunt-power of their bodies. The Creeps were actively involved, boldly trading out in the open. No one seemed to care or find it strange; in a sense they were prisoners as well, with all the same problems.
At least until their tours expired, anyway.
Eventually, Ruby and I decided to find some work. It wasn’t just that the rations the Creeps provided were only sufficient if all we did was sit in the shade staring into space; our boredom was slowly killing us as well, dulling our wits along with our hope. With a bit of help from Jacko, we ended up finding jobs as part of a salvage crew. Considering my ruined condition, Mac—the crew’s short, stocky, red-faced leader—assigned me to be a lookout. I was entrusted with a barely working walkie-talkie, told to haul arse to the graveyard of junk, and to call in when some fresh scrap was dumped. Ruby would then come out and pick through it. If the load looked promising, we were to call in again so that a crew could haul it back.
‘Take care of it,’ Mac said, pointing at my walkie-talkie. ‘If it wasn’t for those babies, my business would be in the shitter.’
For a whole day, from some time after breakfast until a little before dark, I sat in whatever shade I could find and looked over the graveyard of junk, waiting for a work detail to dump a load of rubble. Ruby visited me in the afternoon, making sure that I was okay, doing her best to keep my morale up.
‘Bill, how’s it go
ing?’
‘Couldn’t be better, looks like I got the cushiest job of the lot.’
‘Yeah, well, at least you’ve got something to do. I’m so bored …’
‘Sorry.’
‘And I miss Tobe.’
‘Yeah, I know. I miss him too.’
We fell silent. Together, we looked out at a stark wasteland that was like a savannah at the end of the world. Tobe hovered over us like a ghost that wouldn’t pass on, there in spirit if not the flesh. After a while, Ruby got up and left. I resumed my solitary vigil, barely moving, barely brushing the flies away.
No one came. Nothing happened.
When dusk started to roll in, I limped back to the square. Mac was waiting by his stall, arms crossed over his chest.
‘Bill,’ he said, barely nodding.
‘How are you, Mac?’
‘All right.’
I passed his walkie-talkie back. He didn’t thank me. Instead, he started walking away.
‘So …’
‘What?’ he asked gruffly, turning back.
‘Um, when do I get paid?’
‘You don’t get shit for today—you didn’t call anything in.’
‘But nothing came in.’
‘Not my problem. Now, piss off until tomorrow.’
I didn’t clock on the next morning, despite Jacko’s assurances that he would have a word with Mac. Instead, Ruby and I volunteered for one of the Creep’s work details. By some ridiculous stroke of good fortune, we were chosen.
Working for the Creeps was worse than working for a vulture-scumbag like Mac.
The first day, we spent six or seven hours in the sun, repairing fences on the camp’s northern border. The second day, we cleaned a rundown hall, making it comfortable for a First Country caravan that a lookout had spotted on the Mallee. The third day, we waited on said caravan, fetching food and water, running errands for them, showing them around the camp. The fourth and fifth days passed in much the same way. On the sixth day, the First Country caravan having departed, we were sent out to clear some fallen trees that were blocking the train tracks leading in and out of camp.
At the end of every shift, Ruby and I would be handed our reward: a scarred metal token. Every morning, we exchanged the token for an extra half-litre of water and a handful of whatever extra food the cooks—fellow holdouts, no less—could spare. Most of the time, it was barely enough to make up for our labour.
The Rain Never Came Page 19
