Datsunland

by Stephen Orr

  His plan had been to walk to the hospital and find a bed—a treatment room, a spare mattress, anything. But he’d run out of puff. Up ahead he saw a motel sign, so he quickened his pace.

  He entered the office and a man with cracked glasses greeted him. ‘Good evening, sir.’

  ‘Good evening. A standard room, please.’

  As he filled in the register the clerk asked, ‘Come far?’

  ‘India.’

  He smiled. ‘Best cricket team money can buy.’

  Sevanand shrugged. ‘How much?’

  ‘The team?’

  ‘No, a room.’

  ‘One twenty, my friend.’

  He searched his wallet but could only find eighty dollars in cash. ‘Will this do until the morning?’

  ‘You have a credit card?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well …’ He pointed to a sign on the wall. ‘All rooms must be paid for in advance’.

  Sevanand shook his head. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The new doctor in your hospital. Apparently they couldn’t get an Australian to work here.’

  The clerk just stared at him.

  ‘I take it you don’t plan on getting sick.’

  ‘No need to get nasty.’

  ‘Well?’

  And then he slid a key across the desk.

  Before you start saying this Singh was a lazy fellow, let me tell you, I have always been a hard worker. I was supporting my family at age twelve—washing windows, serving in a bread shop and c. Then to school, or university. Never more than six hours sleep, ever. Even on that third day I was at the hospital by 8 am, and Mr Ash showed me where to fetch a coat and eat lunch and who to ask for cultures, or referrals, or discharge planning. So, as you wave your finger at me, remember, I was only ever eager to please.

  Mark Ash and Sevanand Singh stood at the door to the medical ward. Someone was watching Songs of Praise, someone else coughing sputum into a cup as a falsetto cursed Aunt Velma for having never married the surveyor from Hervey Bay.

  ‘What are my shifts?’ Sevanand asked.

  ‘Sixteen hours on, eight hours off. That’s over four days. Then y’ get two days off. Of course …’ He smiled.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You might be on-call for those two days.’

  ‘Might be?’

  ‘Well, you are. I mean, if Dr Lindsay is busy in surgery.’

  Sevanand lifted his head and rubbed his eyes. ‘Exactly how many doctors are there?’

  Ash waited. ‘Two.’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘Including you.’

  ‘For the whole town?’

  ‘Of course, there’s Dr Brooks, but he’s on extended leave.’

  ‘A holiday?’

  ‘You could call it that. And Dr Carey’s gone back to Adelaide. He’s on WorkCover, with his shoulder. So it’s just you and Brett Lindsay.’

  Sevanand couldn’t believe it. ‘So when do we get some proper time off?’

  Ash just stared at him, and grinned. ‘Listen, Sevanand … you’ve gotta get your head around this place. Yes, the shifts seem long, but some days you may sit there for hours with nothing to do.’

  ‘Doctor!’ a voice called from the far end of the ward.

  Ash raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, shall we get started?’

  Lung disease. A seventy-eight-year-old miner with a cup of phlegm in his hand. Sevanand checked his chart, sat him forward, listened to his chest and asked, ‘Are the antibiotics helping?’

  The old man looked at him and replied, ‘You tell me, you’re the doctor … aren’t you?’

  ‘Are you having trouble with your breathing?’

  The miner looked at Ash. ‘Where’s Dr Lindsay?’

  ‘Don’t worry about Dr Lindsay, this is Dr Singh. He’s just arrived from India.’

  Dr Singh’s first patient stared at him with fierce, red eyes. ‘Well, you mob make pretty good doctors,’ he said.

  Sevanand smiled. ‘Us mob?’ He looked at Ash, who grinned and repeated, ‘You mob.’

  Sevanand told the miner he had to stop smoking.

  ‘Fuck, that’s what me mum told me sixty years ago. You know, Doctor, this isn’t from the fags.’

  ‘Nonetheless …’

  ‘I’m seventy-eight, Dr Singh. I haven’t found a decent bit of opal for thirty-five years, my wife’s dead and my son won’t talk to me. And you’re tellin’ me to stop smoking?’

  Sevanand draped his stethoscope around his neck. ‘Maybe we can give you some oxygen, Mr Ball.’

  ‘Yeah.’ As he closed his eyes.

  They moved on to the next bed. ‘This is Mr Elliot,’ Ash explained. ‘Again, lungs, isn’t it, Mr Elliot?’

  But Mr Elliot looked confused. He retreated under his covers. Sevanand went to take his wrist but he moved his hand away. ‘I need your pulse,’ he said, but Mr Elliot drew his hand over his chest.

  ‘Come on, don’t be silly, Mr Elliot,’ Ash urged.

  ‘I pay my taxes,’ the man explained, studying Sevanand’s chocolate skin.

  ‘Mr Elliot!’ Ash scolded.

  ‘Has he cleaned his hands?’

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Then came the following Sunday, when I went for a walk around the town. I stopped outside the Commercial Hotel and looked in the dining-room window. And there, seated having lunch, was Mark Ash, Dr Lindsay, other nurses and administrators, and people who I supposed were their husbands and wives and children—all of them laughing, patting each other on the back.

  Sevanand sat on the bench outside the CWA hall. Inside he heard more voices and the smell of cooking food.

  Now do I have your permission? he asked his wife.

  Yes.

  I’ve been terribly lonely, he explained. I’ve already checked the bus timetable (over and over, as he sat in his motel room) and the next service leaves at four.

  To whom it may concern—sirs, madams. Save yourself the stamps. I am home. In a way, back where I started, minus the money (you owe me) and many weeks of family life, sanity, work. Although I am disappointed, I am at least happy. To know that every infection I cure, is curable. Every word I speak, valued. Every hand I shake, of blood and tissue and bone. For a while this was not so. People not what they seemed. And so I sit, remembering the desert. Taken there (not in a pleasant way) in my own transporter. So much of value, hidden in the ground, never to be revealed.

  The Shot-put

  Spring 1919

  YANDA HAD SETTLED IN A VALLEY. It was surrounded by honey-brown paddocks that had given up on wheat, resigning themselves to bony sheep that slipped on moss-covered granite as they searched for anything green, or living. The old bluestone cottage was hemmed in by bare hills that cast long shadows across Sam Lancaster’s front garden of burnt clivias and wireweed. It was quiet all day on the front porch. Silent, still, except for when Barbara, Sam’s wife, played piano, or Sam brought the sheep down for shearing or drenching. His yards would fill with dust, and fences would crack and splinter where Barb allowed the mob to bunch.

  Yanda was marginal country. Goyder’s Line passed through their backyard. It was only a line on a map but apparently it meant something. It was the northern-most limit of cropping in South Australia, but everyone agreed it should’ve been drawn a hundred miles south.

  But it was there. People had trusted it—including Sam’s grandfather, who believed he was onto a bargain because of the cheap price of this northern land. But it didn’t last. By the 1880s he’d sold off three thousand acres to nearby Yarrara. Now they had four thousand acres, but that was low-yielding country. Once Barb said, ‘We should sue the government.’

  ‘Why?’ Sam asked.

  ‘They drew the line.’

  But he just looked at her, shaking his head.

  On a clear day you could see the Southern Flinders Ranges to the west, and when you went to town you passed the old Merinee goldmine. Sam often wondered about the sanity of men who’d tried to
extract gold from the granite hills. Or grow wheat in this soil. Despite this he’d once spent an afternoon sifting through an old mullock heap. He did find gold—flecks nearly as big as sugar crystals. But how would you ever get it out?

  In 1919 the winter lasted until October. Dry, as usual. A meteorologist in the Northern Argus said it was because of a rain shadow, caused by the nearby ranges. More stuff the government hadn’t told them. Anyway, it was probably bullshit, Sam guessed. If it didn’t rain it didn’t rain. Who cared why?

  It was a Sunday, but Sam had been working, pulling an old boiler over land covered with woody weeds. He’d filled it with heavy rocks and bolted chains to each end. Hitched these to his horses, Harry and Albert. Led them across the paddocks in overlapping rows, and now the weeds were gone. But not before they’d set seed and blown everywhere.

  My fault, Sam guessed, for not getting to them earlier. He could still hear his dad in his ear: Don’t put off until tomorrow … But so what, he thought, he was just another part of the problem.

  He went into his shed, opened a louvred window and sat down on his old toolbox. He leaned back on the wall but felt the iron coming away from the wood. Took a towel, smelling of turps and tool oil, and wiped his forehead. ‘Barb,’ he called, but then heard her inside, singing to herself, probably mumbling prayers. A rat appeared in the doorway, looked at him and scampered behind his old stripper. It had been ten years since he’d used it. Most of the paint had peeled off but you could still read ‘Morton and Heading’ on the side. He’d covered it with a canvas, but even this was spotted with mould from where the roof leaked its little bit of rain.

  Behind the stripper was an old stump-jump plough. Half of the tynes had come off, but they were all blunted and rusting anyway.

  Sam reached into a barrel and produced a handful of almonds. He used alligator pliers to crack them. Knew how to place the shells in the bronze teeth so they shattered first time, every time. Soon he had a pile of nuts on the box. When he was finished he replaced the pliers, brushed himself off and started eating. Chewed as thoroughly as he could, until he could feel the muscles in his jaw. It was at this point during his evening meal that Barb would usually say, ‘Stop masticating your food, you sound like cow.’

  As he ate he studied a collection of trophies, medallions and ribbons on a shoulder-high shelf. They were polished, arranged on a doily he’d stolen from Barb. Set up in rows so that each could be seen through the gap in front of it. He’d made small wooden receptacles for the medallions, so they sat at an angle of almost ninety degrees. He stood, stepped towards the shelf. There was a dead moth on the lace doily, and he flicked it off. Then he started reading, as he did a dozen times a day.

  Presented to Thomas Lancaster

  Field and Track Champion

  1912

  Lindisfarne College

  The words never changed, but the achievement never diminished, he guessed. He could still remember his visits to town, to Lindisfarne College, for their annual sports day. Standing under the same pepper tree, eating the same pork sausages with bread, watching his son throw javelins, run, spin in circles as he launched a discus on a perfect parabola, grunting as he put his every ounce of energy behind a shot-put.

  Lindisfarne College

  1913 Athletics

  School Record for Shot-put

  Tom Lancaster

  There’d been shouting, and jumping around, and the sports master had been called to verify the measurement. But Tom had done it. Beaten boys three and four years older. And the record still stood, as far as he knew.

  They’d got to bring home the shot-put—all nine pounds of it, sitting proudly beside the trophy. Sam kept polishing it, but it was still dull, dented, dropping on the ground when a mouse brushed past. Or perhaps it was because he’d never fixed the shelf evenly.

  ‘Sam.’

  He stepped back and looked out the door. She had her head out of the window. ‘What?’

  ‘Lunch.’

  He looked at the trophies again. Blew dust from them, but there was none. Ran his rust-coloured hand through the collection of ribbons he’d nailed up with tacks. There was even a newspaper report (Northern Argus, May 1913). ‘Local Boy Makes Good at Lindisfarne’. A grainy picture of father and son standing in front of the pepper tree. Sam had his arm around Tom’s shoulder as Barb stood in the background. He was sweating under a tight, starchy collar he hadn’t worn for years, since someone’s wedding or funeral in Jamestown. Tom was in loose cotton shorts, and a singlet with the Lindisfarne crest.

  Sam started to reread the article, as he did every day. ‘Local lad, Tom Lancaster, of “Yanda” via Merinee, showed the city kids what a farm boy is really made of …’

  As Sam headed inside, to the sound of the kettle whistling, he whispered the words he’d remembered. ‘Tom has been boarding at Lindisfarne for six years, as did his father and grandfather. But this lad is going places, athletically speaking …’

  Barb had a corned beef sandwich waiting. There was a clean tablecloth and the paper was set out, flat, just as Sam liked it. The teapot on its cork mat, covered with a cosy, steaming. There was butter in a saucer, stale bread and fig jam that was bitter beyond eating. Sam stood in the kitchen and looked down at the holes in his socks. Barb noticed and said, ‘Leave them, I’ll get to them tonight.’

  He went into the dining room and sat down. Smoothed the Argus and read the headlines. ‘The land they’re giving those returned soldiers,’ he said.

  ‘What about it?’ Barb said, coming in with a jug full of milk.

  ‘Look at it, north of Port Augusta. They’re setting them up for failure.’

  She poured the tea. ‘I suppose they gotta do something.’

  Sam couldn’t see it. ‘Get ’em building dams, or fixing roads.’

  ‘You can’t do that. They’ve just been to war.’

  No one bothers asking, he thought. Typical government. Some fella gets an idea and that’s that. ‘They should look at us,’ he said.

  ‘There’s still money in sheep.’

  ‘Some.’

  Barb watched her husband read. Grey hair. Bleached-boot skin, calcified by a sun that ruled and ruined everything. Wheatsack eyes that drooped as they emptied across a face of spreading liver spots and varicose decay. Fat chin. Permanently rheumy eyes. A shoddily ploughed forehead, the tynes set too deep. And all this on a man barely forty. Working at beef made no less edible by gravy. ‘Is it tough?’ she asked.

  He held the words back with a finger, finishing the small, smudged chunks of newsprint. Eventually he looked up, met her eyes and said, ‘It was just a matter of time.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Cutting back the train. Three times a week. So if I want to go down on Friday, I can’t come home until Tuesday.’

  ‘Doesn’t affect us.’

  ‘It’s not the point. Too few votes up here.’

  Off he goes again, she thought. But he didn’t. Instead, clearing his throat, sipping black tea and reading.

  Barb looked at a picture in the middle of an otherwise empty wall. Ten-year-old Tom done up in his blazer and tie, smiling, or at least trying to. She could remember their visit to the photographer in Port Pirie. The day before he’d caught the train to town, to his new life as a boarder at Lindisfarne College. He’d been anxious, undecided about leaving his family and friends at the local six-horse school. Crying and pleading with them to let him wait one more year.

  But Sam had been adamant. He’d been ten. It was the right age. Not so young he’d miss them (too much); not so old his education would suffer.

  It was a Sunday, and the photographer’s shop was closed. Sam had knocked on the door for a minute, maybe more. Eventually a man in a singlet had put his head out of an upstairs window and said, ‘We’re closed.’

  ‘We’d like to ask a favour,’ Sam had explained. ‘He’s off to school tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s Sunday.’

  ‘Just one shot. We got him ready especiall
y.’ Touching his son’s shoulder, pointing out the new blazer and a shirt with an over-tight neck.

  ‘Sorry,’ the photographer had replied.

  ‘Ten minutes, mate. You’ve got kids, haven’t yer?’

  ‘Yes, and I’d like to spend some time with them.’

  ‘Please,’ Barbara had said, flattening Tom’s hair.

  The photographer had taken a moment. ‘You got cash?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  And the window had slammed shut.

  Back in their small dining room, Sam was straightening the Argus. ‘Christ!’

  Barb waited for the usual lecture. ‘What is it?’

  But he just kept following the text with his finger.

  ‘What?’

  He looked up at her, then checked the words again.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘I didn’t think they’d do it.’ He stood and walked from the room, leaving his sandwich mostly uneaten. Through the kitchen, down the hallway and out the front door.

  ‘Sam?’ She moved around to her husband’s seat, pulled the paper closer towards her and read.

  Cowards’ List to be Published.

  The Department of Defence has advised the State Government that it will release the names of all soldiers considered to be derelict in their duties in the 1914-1918 conflict. This list will include all deserters, self-mutilators and Cowards. The Argus promises to publish all names provided as an act of Goodwill towards men lost in fighting, their families and the Empire.

  Barb sat back in her husband’s chair. Looked up at the photo of her son and whispered his name.

  Meanwhile, Sam sat on his toolbox. He was anxious and sweaty and could feel his heart beating fast. He undid his top button. ‘Tom,’ he whispered. ‘Where are you, boy? Where are you?’ He looked at the trophies, but there were no answers. ‘Tom.’

  ‘Sam!’ Barb called. ‘Come in, will yer?’

  He waited until there was silence. Stood, opened his toolbox and took out a long rope. Took a few minutes to tie a rough noose at one end. He knew how it was done; he’d thought about it a hundred times. Imagined it all: the knot pulling itself tight, the creaking timber beam (he’d chosen the one, and he threw the rope over it now), the post where he’d tie off, the rope’s texture, the pattern it made as it snaked around the pole, the way he’d position the stepladder and the thud it would make as it hit the ground after he kicked it away.