Chapters

14

Huxley and his mates have a plan.

What we do, he says, is get a truckful of old tractor tubes, drive like the devil out to the Gulani River, chuck the tubes in, jump in the tubes, and go like a singing hyena down the rapids.

You blokes are insane, I say.

Maybe, but, fuck me, what fun it is.

Right, so you’re down one end of a stack of rapids and your truck’s up the other end, how the fuck do you get back?

That’s where Felicity comes in.

Who’s Felicity?

You haven’t met Felicity yet?

Nuh.

Then you haven’t seen the finest pair of pins this side of anything. What about Howard Merkel, you met him yet?

Nuh. Heard of him. He’s another mad bastard coffee buyer isn’t he?

Yeah, and he’s my cousin.

***

Huxley meets me at the bank, same time as the previous Saturday, right after closing. This time he gives me enough time to run upstairs, change out of my whites and into t-shirt and shorts. Then I climb into his truck and he plants his foot, tears out of the bank driveway and heads for the higher hills like a bat out of an oven.

Shit, Hux, I say, could you give a bloke time to settle his nuts on a seat.

Your nuts are going to be so hard and numb after today you won’t know whether you’re sitting on balls or brazils.

Huxley laughs so hard it is clear he thinks this might be the funniest thing he ever said. I don’t want to change the mood but there’s a question I have to ask.

Hux, do you know Margaret Baker?

His face is a new colour and the lines on it shift from a laughing position to something more serious, almost angry.

You all right? I ask.

She’s not your girlfriend is she?

Shit no. What’s going on with you and her?

Nothing. I met her at a party.

Jacky boy, you’re not playing with her are you? Because if you are you’re looking at a gun up your arse. Her dad protects her like Fort Knox.

No. We just met. Once. I know she’s out of my league.

You bet your arse she is. Blokes like you and me, we should stick to the whores. Margaret is the Madonna.

You never hear of that, the Madonna – whore complex?

Nuh. I know about the Madonna and I know what a whore is.

Jacky: one you fuck and one you love. A mate of mine I went to school with down south told me about it. He’s studying psychology and he said that Freudian bloke thought it all up. Now, in your case, can you pick which is which? I’ll give you a clue, the one you fucked up at Jimmy’s, she’s a whore.

Right. And the Madonna is the one you marry?

Yeah, but neither of us is going to marry Margaret Baker. Look, us long-term expats have it pretty good up here but we have to recognise that certain things and certain people are off limits. Jim Baker is an old-fashioned bloke and a legend on both sides of the fence. He went through all the right rituals, paid a bride price, the lot, then married Margaret’s mother in a church before they had any children and if he says don’t fuck with my daughter, we don’t. You with me?

Huxley drives down roads and up tracks and I lose all sense of where we are, where we have come from and where we are going. The bush seems to grow as we drive, becoming thicker and thicker, more impenetrable, mysterious. It’s not like the light-green bush back home. This bush is deep-green and thick with vegetation and something else, something hidden. Every so often a native appears out of the heavy green growth and stands, sometimes stares, sometimes waves, but always with penetrating eyes, as though determined to let us know something, perhaps not to come too close because there is something back there, behind him and he belongs to it and if we venture too far in it will take us, eat us, limb by limb as we scream and beg for our lives.

The bush thins. Relief. I can see through it now. Then the trees dwindle and part and open out into a sort of beach, not a sandy beach, but one full of rocks and pebbles and Toyota Land Cruisers.

As we pull in I see a magnificent creature move across the pebble beach. She is tall, athletic, with perfectly formed calves, and legs that go all the way up to her arse and what an arse. I have never seen anything like it. From her arse up her curved midriff to her straight and strong shoulders there is no part of her that is not the work of a supernatural being. Human nature, I decide, is not capable of creating such beauty. Two people fucking like animals could never produce such a creature. She is an angel, a goddess. Surely a Madonna. She turns around, slowly, her hair drifts with the movement, and I wait with quickening breath for her face which should be nothing less than the face of a princess – but it is, a lot less, but not so much less that it takes away the joy of beholding the rest of her.

Shame about the face, says Huxley.

You were dreaming, weren’t you, you filthy bastard?

Well, even Jesus would weep. She dazzles.

Yes, and she’s taken.

That’s a shame.

We climb down from the truck and walk over to a small group working on rubber tubes.

Hey, Flicka, yells Huxley, you gorgeous, edible slice of woman, come and meet Jack, a bank johnny. He’s just spoofed his pants over you.

Felicity turns, opens her mouth and even though it issues a stream of obscenities it is still not quite enough to lessen the look of her majestic form. I feel the hot red rush up my face, the red of tomato, strawberry, cherry, all the reds available and then a deeper red, almost beetroot.

Jesus, says Felicity, can’t you keep your dick out of your mouth, Hux?

Everyone laughs. Not just because of what she says but because of the way she says it. She has an English accent, one of those odd, funny, regional accents, not one you hear regularly on the television, or in the movies, but one often made fun of by English comedians. Then one huge hand raises itself in a wave, the hand of a man, a hand that does not belong with the rest of her body, but there it is, alongside another one, two man hands on the ends of her magnificent arms. Maybe she’s a mix, mainly woman, but with the mouth and hands of a man, evolved to survive in this tropical madness. She is clearly no Madonna, nor a whore, somewhere in-between. I must ask Huxley if there is an in-between.

My face lightens and cools as the blood slowly flows back through my veins and arteries. I’m not sure about all the godlessness. The expats are exciting to be with, much more exciting than the bank johnnies, but they seem to have lost all inhibitions, manners, and that quality my mother said we must never lose, decorum. Their mouths open to let loose all kinds of shock and horror, but, I keep saying to myself, I’m no longer a virgin because of these people, they have made me a man of the world and because of their gift to me, I will cope with their obscenities. It’s all new, the language, the fucking, everything, but what a place to learn.

Right, Jack, says Hux, this is one fuck you have to meet. Howard Merkel.

A man walks towards me, sort of. At first he almost seems to be walking in another direction, then he changes tack and heads crab-like towards us. He holds out his hand. I take it. He takes mine. He shakes it, but doesn’t quite look me in the eye, sort of peers out from under his forehead. He is a handsome man, built like the man they called the hooker I watched in Rugby League games back in the capital. He is about my height, solid, and he has a cat-like look about him, like he is ready to pounce, to dive into something, anything, like he is forever poised for some kind of action. Interesting mix, the crab and the cat, both solitary animals, both darters, both dangerous.

Gidday, says Merkel. You’re a bank johnny?

Yeah, I say, gives me the shits too.

There are about ten of us, including Huxley, Merkel, Felicity and her boyfriend, Tom Exeter. There are more tubes to offload, makeshift rafts to assemble and, of course, beer to drink. By the time we hit the water we are half-cut.

We enter the water from the small beach and don’t have to do much because, although the water seems peaceful enough, it soon reveals its powerful current and rips us along at a rapid pace, twisting and turning and running between high walls of rock and overhanging foliage. I concentrate on the river and don’t look into the undergrowth. I am on a large tractor tube and in no time at all facing rapids.

Keep your arse in the tube, yells Exeter, but not too low or you’ll bruise the bejesus out of it.

My arse is too low. I drop about ten feet down a rapid and a rock smashes my arse into a thousand cuts and bruises. From then on I ride the long low rapids like a seasoned rider and take the short and sharp falls poised to protect my bleeding, pulpy bum. All the way down the mountain stream we laugh at and insult each other. During a brief lull in speed, along a small stretch, Tom Exeter comes up alongside me.

Are you the bank johnny who has the hots for Margaret Baker? he asks.

Word travels fast up here.

No hots. Just asking about her.

Mate, don’t fuck with her.

I nod. I’m getting the message. Margaret Baker is sacred, not to be touched, not to be joked about. She is the Madonna. Unless, of course, you are Jesus, well not Jesus, that would be incest. Joseph, you’d have to be a Joseph, to be pure, to be worthy. A bank johnny is unworthy, what’s more, I have made it clear I am open to a casual, off-the-street fuck and that makes me filthy-unworthy, although no one says that. Exeter hasn’t said that. But he has obviously heard about me, will know of me and my visit to Jimmy’s. Is Exeter a casual off-the-street fucker? No, he’s got Felicity. And he doesn’t look like one. His hair is neat, his back straight, his clothing ironed and orderly. So who will get Margaret Baker, who will win her affections? Who will her old man choose for her? Who can be worthy? Prince Charles? A Kennedy?

Jacky, look out, screams Exeter.

Too late. I tip over a short sharp drop and lose my ride. Exeter passes me and gathers my runaway tube.

At the end of the run Felicity is waiting for us with the truck. She has offloaded all the eskies and is walking around in a bikini designed for Ursula Andress. She looks better in it than Ursula Andress. Except for the hands. And the face. We need Felicity because Ursula Andress does not have offloading esky hands. We drink all the beer, Felicity drives us back where we started, takes her legs and her man, Exeter, and leaves. Huxley says he has to go too, but it will help if I go with someone else because he is going home in a different direction.

Merkel says: You wanna come with me? I’ll take you back to town a different route.

And when he says a different route, says Huxley, that’s what he means.

Merkel is another lunatic driver and I am barely in his Land Cruiser before it is off and charging up a track I haven’t noticed until we are on it and ripping it to pieces.

No point in taking a track if you can’t rearrange it, yells Merkel.

My arse is on fire. I shift, trying to find a way to sit that doesn’t include pain. I can’t find one.

You got a bruised arse? asks Merkel.

Yes, I say. I think I took a couple of rocks up it.

He laughs and says nothing more for a while, as though concentrating on his driving, as though determined to get us home safe and sound and in one piece.

You and Huxley are cousins? I ask.

Yeah, he says. We did time together at Shore. We got to hang out with Australia’s future business and political leaders. That’s what they told us at school anyway.

He doesn’t say anything again for a while. I look out the window. We’re in the jungle. What’s in there? Then the road opens out and two girls are in the middle of it staring at us, not moving, not waving, just standing, as though the road is theirs and we have no right to be on it. Merkel hits the brakes and skids up to them. They look frightened now. Merkel jumps out of the Cruiser and chats non-stop in pidgin. He goes so fast I have no idea what he is saying. Then he walks over to my window.

You up for it? he asks.

Come on, puss puss. You know, a fuck.

Shit. You can’t just drive up to a chick in the middle of nowhere and ask for a fuck.

Jesus, Mr Bank Johnny, you got a way to go. I thought they said you were a gin jockey.

He has a look in his eyes I haven’t seen before, not on anyone I have ever known. It’s a strange mix of fun and a kind of dark madness but it is not enough to stop me, to make me pause and think of any other possibility because I have to be up for it. It is the only way I am getting it, by being ready for it when it is offered. Somewhere deep inside I am offended by this mad-eyed man leaning in the Cruiser window, disgusted, repulsed, but I am also excited and thrilled by the danger.

Listen, Jacky, says Merkel, this is how these people live. A casual fuck is nothing to them. They do it all the time with their friends, their neighbours, their cousins. It’s a way of life, long before we arrived. We’re not asking them to do something radical.

What about Margaret Baker? Where does she fit?

Ease up, Jacky boy, Jim Baker’s daughter doesn’t fit the mould and if Jim Baker says don’t fuck with my daughter, I don’t.

His eyes are laughing.

Come on, Howie, I say, would that stop you?

Fuck no, but she’s not my type. These two are. You in or out?

Right. I’m in.

Good boy. I’ll set it up.

He walks back to the girls, speaks again in rapid pidgin, turns, gets back in the Cruiser and speeds off.

Where are we going? I ask.

Up the road a bit, says Merkel. They said there’s a clearing. We’re going to meet them there.

Why aren’t they with us?

They didn’t want to get in the truck in case someone saw them.

Why would that matter? You said we weren’t asking them to do anything radical.

No answer. I don’t question him again. He doesn’t look like he’d like any more questions. The girls were right: there is a clearing. Merkel parks the truck and gets out.

You wait here, he says. I’ll have a look around.

I wait. I’m nervous. I’m not sure. In town it seems fine, but out here, who knows. We’re surrounded by a kind of bush not known to me. It’s not like the tall grey timber of Genoralup, peppered with zamia palms, banksia trees and melaleucas. This is not my place. It’s not Merkel’s place. You drive down a road out here and you have no idea what’s up ahead. Could be anything, anybody. Up at Jimmy’s it was different, everyone seemed to know the game, but driving along a road in the bush and meeting two village girls, asking if they want to fuck, and then fucking them, that doesn’t fit. And where are we going to do it? In the back of the truck? On the grass? What if someone else drives along the road? What then?

Merkel bursts out of the bush, running hard. He’s at the driver’s door, yelling, screaming, and behind him are two men with clubs and what looks like a spear. He opens his door and slams it in one fluid movement as the spear flies, glances off the back panel and Merkel laughs and races the Cruiser screaming and charging down the road. I am shit-scared but Merkel is chuckling, yelling and cursing. He drives like the lunatic he is right up to the Jungle Bar. We get out. Go in. Get pissed. Drive up to Jimmy Irish’s. Wait. A couple of girls walk along the street. We whistle. They come over, walk into the house, lift their skirts, we enter, Merkel hands them something, they leave, we get pissed. At three o’clock in the morning I get up to chuck my guts.