Red Can Origami

by Madelaine Dickie

  —Anyway, my father was the president of the Jōban Kosan coalmine. After that shut down in the sixties, he became a board member of one of the companies that runs the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. He passed away many years ago, but my brothers are now both executive directors in the company. They’ll be visiting next month.

  Watanabe places his left hand next to yours on the railing.

  —Japan, he muses. Hungry for Australia’s coal and copper, crude petroleum and uranium. So …

  He flicks his cigarette and it pinwheels into the black water below.

  —Fukushima Daiichi. I guess we’ll see, ne?

  In the days leading up to New Year’s, you’ve got an ache of dread. Partly because of the imminent visit to the White Namibian, and partly because of the usual New Year’s anticipation of disappointment. So many thirty-firsts of busted expectations. So many midnights missed. And this year, not a single invite, not a single plan. Until Lucia calls, and asks you to join her and a group of girlfriends at the pub. There’s a wet t-shirt competition followed by a couple of local bands from communities around Gubinge.

  —I’m really keen for some music, but the wet t-shirt thing … Isn’t it like, demeaning?

  —Of course it is. But it’ll be heaps of fun!

  The pub’s heaving with a boisterous crowd of Burrika men and women. Lucia’s girlfriends are smart and saucy and hold jobs at the hospital, the shire, and the local Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. They’re big girls, and on the dance floor they move with style. You’re resting at a table, wishing you hadn’t worn heels, when a woman plants herself firmly in the seat opposite.

  —Hi, Ava.

  You wait for her face to click. It doesn’t.

  —Do you know who I am?

  —I feel we’ve met but I can’t …

  —I saw you at the information session.

  And somewhere else, too. A sarcastic mouth, pretty. That’s right. At the church with the dead baby.

  —My name’s Katherine Ishikawa, she says. I’m Noah’s wife.

  Someone bumps the table, sending a pale lick of vodka skimming toward your dress. It’s really crowded in here now; there are only fingers of space between hips as people jostle toward the bar or the dance floor. Katherine’s sitting too close. She smells like a sickly mix of Givenchy and body odour.

  —Stay away from him.

  It’s delivered with the authority and condescension of a woman ten years your senior. You want to tell her to fuck off but you can’t, not with the job. Lucia’s elbowing her way toward the table. She reads the situation in a single look.

  —Where are the kids? she asks Katherine.

  —With Noah.

  Lucia snorts, says,

  —So while you’re here, all tarted up like a big hole, Noah’s spending New Year’s looking after the kids. Sounds about right.

  Katherine gets to her feet heavily, knocking the chair backwards.

  —Oh, sit back down, Lucia tells her. And leave Ava alone. She’s got nothing to do with this.

  Katherine launches at you, but you’re too quick, you’re out of there with Lucia, clacking fast for the back exit in your heels.

  —It’s all good, Lucia says, when she’s sure Katherine hasn’t followed you outside. Wouldn’t be a proper New Year without a big rip getting up! I can’t stand that woman. She’s one of the Greys. No idea what Noah saw in her. Keen for the club?

  Lucia rounds up the girls and you head to Gubinge’s single club, a refurbished opium den of debauchery, with Japanese wooden panels and paper screens. Once safely inside, you throw back a margarita and dance barefoot with the girls until dawn.

  The night before you drive the contracts out to the White Namibian, you have strange dreams in which you’re dwarfed by the sky’s geography: the Mount Bullers and Buffalos of clouds. The road to the station dissolves like red aspirin. You get trapped out there.

  Now, fear subsides with coffee and sun, and it’s good to be on the highway, aiming for a horizon bevelled by distance, breathing that clean, lovely smell of country. No traffic fumes, no dog shit cooking on broken skillets of pavement, just the dry, earthy smell of cattle and desert. You’re going to spend the night at the Stockmen’s Rest Hotel. You’re hoping to bump into Noah.

  By the time you reach Stockmen’s, the sky’s become the kicked-up grey of old carpet. The hotel’s car park is almost empty. Under the air-conditioning unit in the main bar, two old blokes are buried in books. At the bar, a knot of drinkers steady their eyes to take you in, then let their stupefied gazes crawl back to their hands, to the last millimetres of beer. The rat-trap hangs above them, its teeth stained. The barmaid’s nose and eyes are inflamed with flu.

  Once you’re settled on the balcony, you wipe the rim of the beer glass before taking a sip, fingers still humming from the road. The first beer doesn’t slake your thirst, and just as you’re considering peeling inside for some repellent and another one, two station guys swagger out with sunburnt thighs and beak-like noses. They settle at a table and keep looking over, trying to make eye contact from under their akubras.

  Thunder cracks like a stockwhip and you all jump, then laugh.

  —Reckon we might be in for it, says one of the blokes, addressing you.

  —Reckon we might be.

  —Would you like to join us? I’m sick of Tony here, haven’t spoken to anyone else in two months.

  —Bullshit. Ryan’s on the sat phone to Mum every second night! Costs a fucken fortune too.

  So, Tony and Ryan. Brothers, with the sinewy frames you would find staggering in Naked Under Capricorn, or trudging along one of D’Arcy Niland’s dusty roads. They wear shorts that barely conceal bulging balls and they look healthy, like Aussies did once. The brothers have just finished a season at Diamond Plains and are heading further north for the next few months to pick watermelons.

  —The work’s pretty hard on your back. But they’re not as bad as mangoes. You wouldn’t think so, but the mango sap can burn your hands. Especially if you’re a pussy like Ryan.

  —Fuck off, Tony! There’s nothing wrong with my hands.

  Ryan turns to you.

  —The money’s shit, and it’s stinking hot, but some of those Swedish backpackers …

  There’s a slick of moisture above his top lip. He looks younger. Tony grabs his forearm.

  —The lady doesn’t want to hear about Swedish backpackers, dickhead. So, anyway, are you on your way to Darwin or something?

  When you tell them you’re heading to De Beer Downs in the morning for work, Tony wipes off a white mo of protein and yeast and takes in your skirt, heels and hair.

  —What’s your work?

  You tell them about Gerro Blue and they nod and say, yeah, our sister’s with Rio Tinto, our uncle’s at Isa, Ryan’s best mate works down at Tom Price …

  A brocade of lightning sizzles above the melaleuca.

  —But back to De Beer, Tony says. He’s a real crazy bugger. Did you hear about the jackaroos?

  —Nah, nothing.

  —What would it have been, Ryan? Maybe three years ago now?

  —Yeah, about three years ago. They’d been mustering in the Gulf Country. Came down here for a change. I think they worked for De Beer for about four months.

  —That’s right, says Tony. Then both jackaroos disappeared. Hang on, before we get into this, I better order more beers.

  —Can I give you some …

  Tony waves away your offer.

  You adjust in the wooden chair, undies soaked with sweat. On the riverbank below, a fisherman slides down the mud, disturbing a freshwater croc.

  —He’s game! you say.

  —Freshies’ll only give you a kiss. This bloke’s a bloody idiot though, fishing in a lightning storm. The barra’ll all be hiding.

  Tony’s back with the beers.

  —Right, where were we up to?

  —The disappearance, says Ryan.

  —The disappearance, confirms Tony. There’d be
en some kind of disagreement over pay. The boys got charged up, stole one of the station’s trucks, and took off for Stockmen’s Rest. But they got lost.

  —You can’t get lost on that road, says Ryan. I mean, you can, but not those boys. They knew every fork.

  Down below, the fisherman casts. With graceful flicks of his wrist he works the lure.

  —The police sent choppers. They found the burnt-out shell of the truck and assumed the boys had legged it back to the highway and shot through. They hadn’t, though. De Beer’s wife knew the truth.

  On the next cast, a gust of wind catches the fisherman’s lure midair.

  —Her people are river people, from the other side of Stockmen’s. Never gets home to her community though. De Beer keeps her out on the station, permanently drunk. One night, when he was away, she confided in some of the older jackaroos. Said the boys hadn’t ‘disappeared’. Said De Beer hunted them down.

  The fisherman’s onto something, the line’s taut, the reel’s running.

  —When he found them, he threw them down an old well with ten litres of petrol and an Easystrike.

  The fisherman’s pulled in a catty. Its whiskers twitch.

  There’s another drum roll of thunder but no rain.

  Before you hit the road, you walk to the servo for a takeaway coffee. The pavement sparkles with glass, shimmers with an origami of flattened red cans. You skirt an empty bottle of Jim Beam. You skirt an empty bottle of baby formula. You skirt a playground with two broken swings.

  There’s drinking in Gubinge, but it’s not like this. Someone told you that before the restrictions, when a fire incinerated the grass around Stockmen’s Rest, there was such an abundance of beer cans they could be seen from outer space.

  An old lady is pumping her wheelchair toward the servo. You beat her to the door, open it for her. Inside, a machine dribbles black coffee into a paper cup and it’s only marginally better tasting than the bitter Nescafé in your room.

  There’s no milk.

  On the way out of town, you pass a group of people drinking under the trees. Not far from them, a skinny kartiya in a basketball singlet has got a woman tight by the hair. He’s dragging her into a car wash. He’s slamming his knee into her nose. The people under the trees, faces bleak with the erosions of beer, watch without watching. The kartiya feels it, your burning disgusted look, and he turns and bares his teeth.

  You fumble for your phone. With one shaking hand on the wheel, you use the other to google the number for the local police station. The man who picks up takes your name and the details of the assault, then thanks you. Shit, maybe you should’ve stopped. Tried to help. Tried to break it up.

  On the outskirts of town, the houses have boarded up windows and camp dogs cower in the shade, scared and scarred and savage. You clear town and drive another seventy kilometres along the highway, before taking a right-hand turn into the desert. Other than the horizon, curved slightly, like the edge of a water glass, the only anchor for the eye is a distant, Mars-like mountain range. Tracks riddled with cattle hooves, cut off into low vegetation. Two young stockmen could get lost here, for sure. One young journo could also get lost …

  You’re starting to feel comfortable on the dirt. Your toes tickle the accelerator. You lean into the corners. And then, before you know what’s happening, the back wheels of the car skid out in a cloud of bulldust. Shit. Flipping the car’s not part of the plan. You ease off the accelerator.

  Up ahead, a troopie jolts toward you. There’s something bristly on the roof rack, something bleeding down the windscreen. It’s a bush pig! It was a bush pig. The man driving grins as he nears. His teeth are punched out. He shares the car with a dog, a gun and two unsmiling children. He waves as they pass.

  At the gate, there’s a metal sculpture of two cows fucking. At the homestead, the Malinois streak through the open door. They’re followed by the White Namibian.

  —Verpiss dich! he screams at the dogs.

  His voice is hoarse, as if cancer’s half-closed a fist around his windpipe. The dogs back away, vampiric teeth still gnashing. The White Namibian’s pink eyes are off-kilter, mad with dust and sun.

  —You look familiar, he says.

  —People say that to me all the time.

  He grunts.

  You sneak a look at your phone.

  No signal, not even an SOS. Gripping the contracts hard, you follow the White Namibian inside.

  The smell hits you first. Cigarettes and burnt canola oil, spilled beer and cat shit. As your eyes adjust, you realise you’re in some kind of parlour. The White Namibian gestures to an armchair upholstered in animal fur. The walls are plastered with photos.

  The family photos are the most prominent: portrait shots of three generations of De Beer men, like the photos in the halls of parliaments. They sneer from their frames, pupils black and fat with venom.

  Beneath them are hundreds of old photos. In one, a countryman’s handcuffed facedown to a wooden platform. Old De Beer towers over him with a whip, his slack, doughy lips parted in pleasure.

  In another, two kartiya with guns and moustaches guard a line of Aboriginal men. The men are chained at the ankle and the neck. Their rib cages are prominent, like those of torched dugong. They stand shoulder to shoulder.

  In a third, two Aboriginal girls, perhaps sisters, perhaps eight and ten, are propped naked on the White Namibian’s knees. Their breasts are tiny buds.

  The White Namibian follows your gaze with a leer and finally speaks.

  —Little moisties, aren’t they?

  You will down a rising tide of panic and offer the contracts.

  —Graeme, as you know, I’m representing Gerro Blue and I’ve brought the final contract for you to sign over the station to our company. If you don’t mind, I’ll need signatures here, here, here and …

  The White Namibian’s face goes dark as a dust storm.

  —Hang on a sec, missy. What did you say?

  He must be cooked in the head. Or perhaps deaf. You repeat yourself, and Graeme De Beer starts laughing. A vertical blind, like a long-decayed tooth, clicks against window glass. The White Namibian grabs your wrist.

  —Did you know there’s a street named after us in Windhoek? Von de Beer Straße. Or perhaps it’s in Munich.

  Your fingers are purpling. He’s cutting the blood off, he’s leaning closer, he’s murmuring wetly in your ear,

  —It used to be lawless. They’d decorate us. They’d name streets after us. There was a coon bounty.

  From deep within the house comes a husky female holler.

  —Where the fuck’s my lighter?

  He half turns his head, a Patricia Piccinini profile of smoothly cascading chins. He doesn’t let go.

  —How the fuck would I know? he hollers back.

  You wait a long moment, hoping the owner of the voice will storm in, startle his grip; hoping he’ll just sign the papers. But no-one storms in. And there’s no reply. Just an uneasy, musty, lair-like silence.

  —Those signatures, Mr De Beer?

  The White Namibian hears fear. Turns back to you. Starts to smile.

  —Let’s do a deal, he says.

  —A deal?

  —I’ll sign for a kiss.

  —What?

  He lets go then, leaving a mark livid as gravel rash.

  —Show me where to sign.

  Your voice is thick with the terror of the surreal,

  —Here, here, here and …

  It happens fast: the signatures, inelegant, painfully childish, marking the death of an era, one form of colonisation superseded by another; and then the hand, clamping the back of your neck; and then the tongue, filling your whole mouth until you’re gagging on it, the fucken thing’s touching your tonsils, you can’t breathe, you’re gagging on a taste rancid as raw killer left strung in the sun.

  And then it’s done. And you’re retching, running from that dark parlour, contract pressed to your chest; you’re burning your thighs on the hot vinyl seat of th
e car, fumbling the key, and De Beer has followed you out. He stands on the balcony, he stands motionless, hands slack at his sides.

  He’s weeping.

  Jesus Christ, the mad old bastard’s weeping.

  You throw the car into reverse and drive it like you stole it. The distant cliffs throw a lens-busting blaze.

  A week later, you’re at the Beach Bar for a meeting with Noah. The sun fizzes like sherbet into the sea. Noah broods over a beer.

  —Tell me the White Namibian didn’t just transfer his station to Gerro Blue?

  The question’s almost rhetorical.

  —And the cattle? Who did he sell the cattle to, then?

  —I hear the cattle are going to Diamond Plains.

  —But we have a gentlemen’s agreement, Noah says. I have the money to buy him out. Property and stock. We’ve got a lawyer drawing up the contracts as we speak.

  —Shit, Noah, I’m so sorry.

  You’ve missed talking with him. It’s always earnest and urgent and easy; the words skim like pebbles. But there’s something else, lurking catfish-fat under the surface; that muddy, muddled memory of New Year’s Eve, that one-liner like the blade of a gill: ‘I’m Noah’s wife’. You’re not brave enough to noodle for it.

  Noah’s saying,

  —So, we’re reversing our position. Dropping our moratorium on uranium exploration and mining. I think the best thing for our mob is if we sit down at the negotiating table with Gerro to work out this agreement. It’s either that or we get nothing. No royalties, no jobs, no protection of our heritage or our cultural sites: nothing.

  The wind’s drawn a cellophane-thin skin of sand over the deck. You feel the first nibble of evening midgies.

  —Gerro understand how important it is to have a social licence to operate. They’re in it for the long run, so they need community support. I don’t think they’re out to rip you off.

  Noah smiles, perhaps at your optimism, or naivety.

  —To be honest, Ava, the biggest challenge will be getting the rest of the mob to agree to it. Basically, as part of our governance, we’ll need to present the agreement to the whole native title group. Then the group will vote on it. A majority vote wins.