Hinterland

by Steven Lang

  ‘We can always use a mechanic,’ Alt says.

  Around midday Ange takes him down the creek. Not to the weir, further upstream where the creek’s still flowing through forest, to a pool where they can be by themselves and this time he takes off his clothes, why wouldn’t he, except of course as soon as they’re in the water a couple of old biddies appear and stand there the whole time watching while he comes out and dresses himself. Ange there, stark naked, talking to them. Turns out the older one owns the land. It’s her who’s put up the monitoring box on the tree. Says she’s doing it to record frogs. It’s the frogs’ll stop the dam, she says.

  After these old girls piss off they’re not so much into it next to the creek so they go back up the tent and do it there even though it’s hot inside, like being in a fucking sauna. When he wakes up Ange’s gone and he’s lying in a pool of sweat with his head pounding. It’s all he can do to crawl outside, take himself down to the waterhole to cool off.

  It doesn’t get rid of the headache but at least it’s eased. He finds Ange up at the kitchens, helping a band set up for a gig. He sees her before she sees him. She’s leaning against a stack of speakers. She’s got her hands behind her back pushing her tits out at this bloke she’s talking to, looking up at him, head tilted back and laughing. Ange’s got this really wide mouth. When she laughs it’s like her whole face cracks open, like it’s a kind of weather station for what she’s feeling. When she sees Will coming the smile just drops right out of it. One side dips into a scowl; you wouldn’t think such a small thing could say so much. It gets him in the stomach like he’s been hit. He goes up to them but she doesn’t even introduce him. It’s like he’s an embarrassment. He has to hold out his hand to the bloke and say his name to get him to say his, which is, of course, Steve. He’s the guitarist with the band and he knows Ange from some other place. Will hangs there, waiting for something to happen, for Steve to go tune his guitar or whatever, but he doesn’t seem to notice he’s not wanted. Ange is off on one of her raves, telling this long story about someone they both know. When she finishes she gives this big laugh and Steve puts his hand on her arm for no reason at all and leaves it there. Something just switches in Will, it’s like fuck off dude, and he reaches out, calm-like, and lifts the man’s hand off of her and Ange says, ‘What the fuck?’ and Steve pushes back, ‘Don’t touch me, man,’ he says. He goes to throw Will’s hand off of him and Will simply goes with the movement, this is what Aikido’s for, he just lets the man’s force take him where he wants to go which, it turns out, is onto the ground, face down, hard, Will coming down onto him to make sure he stays put, his knee in his back, the air going out of the cunt in a great puff of dust, Steve’s arm up behind his back, not fucking moving now.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Ange screams, pulling at him, so he lets the guy up. Not so cocky anymore.

  ‘I’m just looking out for you,’ he tells her.

  Steve takes a couple of steps back, holding onto his arm like he’s injured it. ‘Hey man, that’s not cool,’ he says. ‘I need to play, man. You can’t fucking hurt me like that.’

  There’s a whole bunch of people looking. Steve brushes himself off, Will hasn’t hurt him, barely touched him.

  ‘I don’t want you to look out for me,’ Ange says. Still fucking yelling. He’s screwed up in some serious way. She’s really fucking angry.

  At least Steve figures out it might be time to go. ‘I’ll catch up with you later, Ange,’ he says, giving a little kind of a wave. Pissing right off.

  ‘You don’t get to do that,’ she says to him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t get to tell me what to do.’

  It doesn’t matter that he wasn’t trying to tell her what to do. Which is to say, he was, sort of, but not like that. And he doesn’t know how to say whatever it is that he was trying to do.

  ‘Just because I’ve let you fuck me,’ she says, ‘doesn’t mean you own me.’

  And that’s it. He’s in the dog-house. She won’t talk to him, never mind that it was her that did it. That night, at the dance, there’s a whole bunch of people he’s not seen before come in from the surrounding district. A fundraiser. The band’s playing loud and everyone’s dancing, Ange getting in amongst them. He tries to dance with her but he’s not much of a dancer, never has been, and anyway she keeps moving away, spinning around and slipping off between the other people. It’s like a game for her, he sees that; he watches her as she goes to the stage and throws herself around in front of Steve, shaking every bit of herself like she wants to have sex with the whole world. He wants her to stop and come back to the tent like she did the previous night, but she won’t, she dances on, with everyone and no-one, with anyone except him. Then, when the band takes a break, she goes off with them, leaving him like some dewy-eyed fuck, sitting by himself on a bale of hay.

  He can’t take it. He finds where he’s parked the ute and drives back to The House. Doesn’t go in, but. It’s late. He walks out into the paddock, out to the edge where the dead car is, where you can see the ocean way off in the moonlight, past the towns along the coast and he sits there with this hurricane whirling around inside him, this giant fucking wind that he has to keep pressed down but which is just too strong, will always be too strong, carving him open to the night. He knows what it is, he isn’t stupid, he’s jealous, but it feels so unfair because it was so good in the tent before. He fell asleep after they fucked and when he woke up she was someone else.

  She was the one made him like that, she would have made anyone like that, she did it on purpose; words coming into his mind, slut, cock-tease and worse. All this shit bubbling and boiling inside so it’s like, up there on the edge of the world, he’s never hated anyone quite so much as he hates her and yet the stupid thing is at exactly the same moment he wants her, would do anything for her.

  He comes in out of the moonlight onto the back veranda, doesn’t see Jaz there on the old couch, the one Ren’s dog sleeps on during the day, until he all but trips over his legs.

  ‘Will,’ he says, ‘Willie Will Bill. Where you been? What you doing up at this time of the morning?’

  He’s not ready for him to be there. In all the excitement with Ange he’s managed to forget about this being some sort of a mission. He’s been in this ecstasy that he’s not seen before in his sad fucking life and it’s made everything around him look good too.

  He tells Jaz what he’s been doing, about meeting up with a woman and getting on the inside. Jaz listens. Real calm. Asks questions about everything. Gives special attention to this bloke Alt, who Will wishes he’d thought more about at the time; but also how the camp is run; who’s there (an Israeli? What does he look like?); about the frog stuff down the creek.

  Jaz doesn’t ask him to sit so he stays where he is, leaning on a veranda post, talking to this shadowy figure who kind of pulls stuff out of him, as if all the time Will had been taking notes and was just waiting for the right questions for the details to spill out. He wonders what the fuck Jaz was doing sitting there anyway, but doesn’t ask. You don’t ask Jaz things like that.

  ‘Well Billy, you’ve done good, haven’t you? Better than I could’ve thought. Good on you mate.’

  He says thanks. Praise from Jaz doesn’t come often and maybe he’d feel better about it if it wasn’t that he was so cut about Ange. The moon’s gone over the house now, pouring its light out on the hill in front of them as bright as day, so bright you can almost see colour. He’s no idea what time it is, close to dawn maybe. If he thought there was any chance he’d sleep he’d go to bed.

  ‘What’s up?’ Jaz says.

  ‘The chick I told you about,’ he says, as if that sums it up.

  ‘I could see something’s eating you.’

  Jaz’s the last person he expects to lend him an ear but right then anything’s possible, really, and if he doesn’t talk about it chances are he’s going to fucking implode. He tells Jaz how she was there one minute and gone the next. Ab
out how they’d spent the night together, not the details, just that it had been good. About swimming down the waterhole.

  When he’s finished Jaz doesn’t say anything for a time. He just leaves Will’s words hanging there like he’s been talking to nothing.

  ‘See those cunts at the camp,’ Jaz says, eventually, ‘they don’t care about anyone but themselves. They don’t give a shit if nobody’s got a job, it’s all the same to them. They’d have everyone living back in humpies if it were up to them. They’ve got what they want and now they’re going to stop any other bastard getting it.’

  The thing he likes about Jaz is that he sees things the way they are. It’s not just at the camp, but, it’s in the town too. These in-comers have taken over everything, filling up the place with their fancy cars and shops, with their fucking crazy ideas of the land, as if they’d know a bit of clover from kikuyu, planting fucking trees every which where, like they’re fucking forest animals so there’s no room for him anymore, doesn’t matter what he’s done for his country in foreign places.

  ‘I’m here to tell you. When I came back I went down. You know about it. You don’t need to hear any more of that shit. What I haven’t said was why it happened. I won’t bore you with it. Thing is, I see the same thing in you. I came back here and I didn’t like the place anymore. Australia. You know what I mean? I’d seen all this shit. I’d done stuff which nobody ought to have done. Nobody should’ve ever have fucking seen. I mean it. And I came back here and I couldn’t figure what it had been for. Everywhere I looked were just people queuing up to buy shit, filling their lives with junk like that was the meaning of life, filling up their bodies with it, cunts stuffing themselves so hard they have to wear special-sized shorts and shirts.

  ‘You do these things as a soldier which are just, you know, in the line of duty,’ he says. ‘Nobody’s going to pat you on the back for them, but no-one’s going to put you in jail for them neither, if you see what I mean. They’re things that happened and that’s all there is to it, but they have a way of staying with you, and there’s no-one can take them away.’

  Will’s not sure about this bit, he isn’t one of those who did stuff they shouldn’t have done, seen a whole lot of shit that no-one ought to see. He’d fixed machines. That’s all. He’s still waiting for Jaz to bring it back around to Ange, to what’s eating him, but then this thought comes to him – maybe it’s because of Jaz talking about people who only think about themselves – that something’s bothering Jaz, this is why he’s up there at four o’clock in the morning on the dog sofa. It occurs to him that Jaz wants someone to listen to him.

  ‘You okay, Jaz?’ he says.

  There’s another of these silences. Will allows himself to think, for just a moment, that he’s right, that out here on the veranda in the very early morning, they’re on the level.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about, mate,’ Jaz says.

  Putting him back in his box. He’s got it wrong. Jaz could be talking to any fucker. There’s this silence into which he wants to put an apology for even thinking what he thought.

  Then Jaz says, ‘Circumstances beyond one’s control, eh? Shit going down. Things I’ve got to make right. You do your fucking best for people and sometimes it’s not good enough. But Billy, I’ll say this. You done good these last couple of days. I’m listening to you and I’m thinking there’s maybe a way to kill two birds with one stone, fuck with these turkeys at the camp and do a little service for someone else at the same time. That’s what I’m thinking.

  ‘I reckon you need to go back. See your girl again,’ he says. ‘We need someone on the inside. Never mind that crap about her going off with another bloke. You did the right thing to leave. You’ll see. Before you know it she’ll be begging for you. You can’t be seen to want them, no girl wants a man who’s weeping for it.’

  Hitting him where it hurts. He wasn’t weeping for it. Well, maybe a bit.

  Later that morning, though, when they’re out the back on the grass doing their stretches, all of them out in the early light, getting ready for their run, there’s the ping of a text on his phone:

  He cleans himself up and gets in the ute. Doesn’t matter if Jaz has told him to or not, he’s got no choice, he has to go back.

  nine

  Nick

  The Alterbar was in a converted church at the bottom end of the street, near the creek, its name emblazoned above the entrance in a red neon font that mimicked Stace’s Eternity, running liquid in the rain this night, splashing gaudy reflections on the wet concrete path that led towards the building’s twin ecclesiastical doors. A surprising number of people inside, collected around old wooden tables, their only common factor being, perhaps, a vaguely bohemian vibe, loose-fitting clothes, a certain studied ease, none of which was any indication – Nick had discovered this about Winderran – of financial status. A three-piece band playing on the small raised area where the altar had once been, singer, piano and saxophone. The place, with its high-raked ceiling and lead-light arched windows, a bit funky, condensation collected on the glass, an exhibition of somewhat garish paintings strung up between them. A bar down one side where he ordered a craft beer from the gay man with significant piercings who asked if he was a member.

  He wasn’t, hadn’t even realised it was a club.

  ‘It’s all good,’ the barman said, offering him a book to sign.

  A quick glance around the room confirming she wasn’t there, that, in fact, while he vaguely recognised some faces, he knew no-one. Taking his beer to a small table in the back corner and hunkering down, swiping the screen on his phone to see if anyone wanted him. The singer a long thread of femininity in a deep red cocktail dress, lipstick to match, vamping it up to the mike on standards, projecting sexy innuendo over the top of the noisy crowd. Winding up the set with an extended version of I’m Your Man.

  He’d barely touched his beer when a woman approached.

  ‘Nick,’ she said. ‘It’s Marie. You remember, we met at Guy’s place for dinner, oh, it must be weeks ago now?’

  Sliding into the chair opposite, or rather, half onto the chair, so as to communicate she wasn’t there to stay, well, unless invited. On that earlier occasion she’d been dressed in something flouncy that gave the unfortunate impression she was both uptight and a little fey. Tonight she was in jeans and a simple black top with shoelace straps, cut low enough to confirm but not flaunt that cleavage, her blonde hair loose, and in this guise she was more attractive, more real in fact, smiling at him from kind eyes. Resting a finely shaped hand, long fingers, on the table.

  ‘We’re so blessed in this town,’ she said.

  Tilting his head in question.

  ‘With music,’ she said. ‘I mean, you don’t expect to hear musicians like these in a place like this, do you?’

  ‘No, no you don’t,’ he said. People in the town, he’d noticed, often found reason to congratulate themselves for living there, which was, he guessed, a good thing, although it didn’t always feel that way.

  ‘Do you want to join us?’ she asked. ‘There’s room at our table.’ Indicating a group of people further down the room, two or three grey-haired men, a couple of other women, one of whom was looking their way.

  She was, he recalled, a potter. Hard to suppress an image of how those fingers, so used to modelling clay, might feel against the skin. Important to at least try not to see every woman as a possible sexual partner. She was not, anyway, so much offering herself – although there was a certain promise in her invitation – as the chance of company, conversation, laughter.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but I won’t tonight, I’m expecting someone.’

  ‘Well, in that case I’ll leave you be,’ reaching across the table to touch the back of his hand. ‘But if you change your mind, you know where we are.’

  She stood up, almost colliding with a young man coming in the door. Nick watched as she wove her way back through the tables. A nice shape to her hips. Miles had said something to
him one night in reference to women, how they no longer exerted power over him in the way they once had. Women, he’d said, had become just like other people now … he could relate to them based on who they were, on what they said or thought, as if they were nothing more than attractively shaped men. It wasn’t a concept Nick could even begin to embrace.

  The young man had made it to the bar. Something familiar about him despite the raincoat draped over his shoulders. Gay, too, at least by the cut of his hair and the stovepipe jeans turned up high on the ankles. The barman leaning across the counter to say something in the young man’s ear with what Nick thought was unusual intimacy, although that might have been projection because, in response, the young man produced his wallet, clumsily, using only his left hand, flicking it open to show his ID, revealing, when he turned to face the room, that his right arm was in a cast. Making it all but certain this was Cooper, the boy he’d rescued in the hills to the west of town, except that this young man, for all the similarity, seemed thinner and had just legally purchased a Corona, from which he was now taking a sip, resting his good elbow back against the counter to survey the room with the confidence of someone much older. His reappearance, now, in the bar, inducing in Nick a sense of unease which the dinner with Lamprey and his wife and the chance meeting with Bain had done nothing to dispel.

  More people came up for service. The young man made his way to the back of the room. Nick took up his drink, went to stand next to him.

  ‘It’s Cooper, isn’t it?’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Nick Lasker.’

  ‘Doctor Lasker,’ Cooper said, ‘great to see you.’ Sounding genuinely pleased but looking discomfited, nervously glancing around the club, confirming Nick’s suspicions that he had, indeed, failed him. Not really anything he could do about it now but say he was sorry. Cooper holding up his plaster to indicate he couldn’t shake hands, his beer in the other one, bending his head in close with a curious, perhaps embarrassed, smile on his full lips. ‘But you could call me Martin tonight, if you don’t mind.’