Australian Force Vietnam Badge
It was then that he saw Hook for the first time, standing by the dozer. A man, he thought, of 50 or so, dressed in clean old jeans, a plaid wool shirt, new work boots. His hair was thick, steel-grey, curling a little round his ears; his face weathered the colour of old oiled wood. He was thin and lightly boned, but his frame seemed strung with tough sinews, like a knotted spar that might not lightly be split. He held himself very straight, his head tilted back a little as he talked, and he made small economical motions with his hands to Dobson and the driver. They all turned to look at the hill, and it was then that Arthur saw the white-capped pegs—painted wooden stakes driven into the slope.
The dozer coughed and chugged into life, its twelve-foot blade lifted, and it began to gouge a track up the steep bank. Arthur saw that a section of the fence had been cleared of blackberries, the wire strained back to new posts. When had it been done? He should surely have noticed…
As the big bulldozer began to gouge up great kerfs of rich dark brown earth Arthur saw the stranger start up the hill ahead of it. And it was then that he became aware for the first time that there might be something distinctive and special about the man. For it seemed to him almost as if the hill had suddenly been flattened and the stranger was walking on level ground. He went up the slope at an easy walk, with a kind of grace that lay in no individual part of his body, but was a function of the whole. He seemed never to make—to be incapable of making—a clumsy or an uncertain movement.
Puzzled, Arthur retreated slowly to his verandah. He watched the hill for a little, then forced himself to the day’s tasks. He climbed the rough ladder to his sagging roof and began to work on the ancient iron with a wire brush. On the town dump he had found a tin of primer and it would keep out the rain for another winter or so. He brushed deep into the rust spots, scrubbing at the pocked surface until bright metal caught the autumn sunlight. Moving the ladder a foot or two at a time he brushed, brushed, his back to the hill.
But the roar of the dozer filled the valley and he could not ignore it. He looked over his shoulder occasionally and caught glimpses of the hill. By midday a road had been cut up the steep slope; by midafternoon a deep dam excavated in the gully near the top fence; by evening a track pushed into the bush to the west, a flat platform levelled between the two roads. At five o’clock the dozer fell suddenly silent and a little later the driver left. The sunlight had gone from the hill slope now and in the pool of shadow Arthur could see the stranger ranging the hill, stopping here and there to look southward where the light still lay on the hills.
When he looked again the stranger was gone.
The next morning at kettle-boil the dozer coughed into life again. Arthur looked out into a chill morning, grey and drizzling. The yellow machine was crawling slowly up the new track, pulling a bright aluminium caravan. At the top of the track, high on the hill, the dozer swung its tow onto the newly cut platform, edged it carefully into place, and lurched down the hill again. An hour later the lowloader came and took the tractor away.
Arthur climbed his roof again in frank curiosity and sat astride the rusty ridge capping, his legs clamped like small strong calipers.
He could see, now, a green utility parked by the roadside, the stranger leaning on its bonnet. While he watched a truck appeared, loaded with gravel. It dumped its load at the bottom of the track, departed. Soon it was back with another load, and then came a small red tractor with a diminutive blade. Slowly the heaps of gravel were shaped and smoothed to the contour of the track, graded to the steep slope.
The stranger was moving now. With a kind of detached envy, Arthur watched the smooth economy of his movements on the hill. He made two trips from the road to the caravan site carrying tools—pick, shovel, chainsaw. Later he carried sheets of galvanized iron up the slope beside the track.
Arthur gave up any pretense of work and spent the rest of the day watching. He saw the stranger cut spars in the bush, drag them to the earth platform; saw holes dug, stumps set, studs nailed, a door dragged up and hung, a bucket of some kind taken in. It dawned on him that the stranger was building a lavatory beyond the caravan.
In the late afternoon it was finished, the roof nailed down, the door latched.
Arthur found himself frowning a little in puzzlement. For in all the stranger’s movements there had seemed a savage, almost a frantic, haste; a haste that sat oddly with the controlled grace of his movements. To Arthur it seemed a kind of perversity, as if a fine machine were running ungoverned and beyond safe limits.
He shrugged and went inside to his fire, to a meal of bread and jam, tea. He had neglected his cooking.
Late at night, urinating sleepily by the woodheap, Arthur saw on the hill the dim yellow shapes of the caravan windows. And behind their small panes he fancies that he saw a shadow moving; passing and repassing slow, restless, sleepless.
Early porridge eaten, pot and plate scraped, teapot filled and brewing, Arthur heard the soft tread on the crumbling brick path. At the light rap he left the fireplace and opened the warped door.
The stranger stood quite still on the verandah, looming against the backdrop of the blackberry hedge, the ti-trees, the misty streamers of fog by the creek bed. Arthur, squinting a little against the light, looked up at the man’s face. It seemed to be composed of slightly mismatched planes, beaten into a kind of unity by time and random blows. The thin straight nose carried a small knot of scar tissue at the bridge. A slight grey stubble flecked the long chin.
Arthur stood wordless in deep surprise; the stranger was clearly older than he had thought, older even than Arthur. The distant sight of the long slight body moving so easily on the steepness of the hill had suggested no more than a vigorous maturity. Arthur’s eyes went to the lean frame under the checked shirt and old denims.
‘Mr Blackberry?’ The voice was soft, a little high-pitched, with odd rising inflections. To Arthur it seemed a voice held carefully in check, its energies suppressed, restricted to curbed subtleties.
‘Mr Blackberry?’
Arthur blinked at the prefix. ‘Oh, well,’ he said at last, ‘Artie…yes, that’s me…Artie Blackberry.’
‘I asked at the post office yesterday,’ said the stranger. ‘They told me that you sometimes did odd jobs…’
‘Ah…sometimes. It depends.’
‘My name’s Hook,’ said the stranger. ‘Lachlan Hook. I’m living across the valley.’ He turned his head briefly to glance at the hill behind him where sunlight was beginning to creep up the slope. ‘I’ve got a small job, small but regular. I’d like you to see it, have a look, see if you’d do it. At your convenience, of course.’
Arthur hesitated. ‘Well…I could look. What is it?’
‘I’d rather you saw it,’ said Hook.
‘Oh…well.’ Suddenly Arthur was struck by his own lack of hospitality. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Well, thank you, yes.’ And Hook stepped inside. Unlike Arthur’s other rare visitors he stared about unabashed at the sparse and makeshift furnishings, the neat row of unmatched mugs, the meat safe, the chipped sink, the sooty fireplace, the threadbare rugs, the shelves of tattered books.
‘You’re pretty comfortable here,’ he said.
Arthur, flushed and confused, poured tea, reached nervously for sugar and milk.
Hook shook his head. ‘Black, please, no sugar.’
They drank their tea standing by the fire in silence.
Hook tossed the dregs of his cup into the fireplace, went to the sink and rinsed his cup carefully. ‘Could you come now,’ he said, ‘get it settled?’
Arthur nodded, choking a little on the last of his tea. He was suddenly glad that he had made his bed; he knew that, for some reason which he could not understand, he would have felt ashamed and embarrassed had Hook seen the tousle of his blankets.
‘Good,’ said Hook. ‘I’ve got the ute parked up the lane.’
Hook drove the utility up the steep track, the vehicle sliding a little in the fresh gravel. He swung the wheel gently, fed a little throttle, and parked beside the bright new caravan.
‘This is where I’ll build my house,’ said Hook as they got out. Arthur noticed that the caravan was set hard against the rear wall of the cut and that there was space left on the earth shelf to accommodate a small house.
‘Cold in winter,’ said Arthur. ‘The sun hits it late.’
‘Worth it,’ said Hook, looking out across the fifty miles of hills and valleys to the south. ‘That view…’ He paused a little, almost as if embarrassed. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you the job.’ He led the way towards the small lavatory and pushed upon the door to show the wooden seat, the galvanized pan beneath, the bucket of sawdust, and paper roll on a loop of twine. Then he stood silent, a little awkwardly.
Arthur realized, with a tiny shock, that for all his assurance Hook was ill at ease.
‘What I need,’ said Hook, a certain flatness in his voice and his eyes as suddenly chill as grey creek rocks on a winter morning, ‘is someone to empty the can once a week. I’ll dig the hole. I just need someone to bury it, cover it.’
There was an uncomfortable pause.
‘It’s not a thing I like to ask anyone,’ said Hook distantly. ‘No one should have to bury another man’s shit. But I’m asking, all the same.’
Arthur smiled a little, suddenly almost composed. He looked up at the other man’s taut face a foot above his own. ‘Shit’s shit,’ he said. ‘Your own, or someone else’s, all the same.’ He stepped into the tiny building, raised the seat lid, noted the even layer of sawdust that covered the small pile of faeces. ‘I’ve been emptying cans since I could carry them.’
‘Five dollars a time,’ said Hook tightly. ‘For the job. Another five for the bloody indignity!’
Arthur was shocked at Hook’s vehemence, the unmistakable flavor of self-loathing in his voice.
‘There’s no indignity,’ he said. ‘Washing dishes, gutting rabbits, emptying shitcans…it’s all got to be done, hasn’t it?’ He paused. ‘Just the five a week, that’ll do.’ And with abrupt and comic grandiloquence: ‘Think nothing of it.’
And suddenly they were both laughing, their voices echoing across the empty spaces of the hill.
Hook touched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Deal, then.’ He was smiling. ‘And thank you, Mr Blackberry.’
‘No one calls me that,’ said Arthur. ‘Artie, that’s what everyone calls me.’
‘Arthur?’
‘Yes, Artie.’
‘Arthur. Artie’s no name for a man. Arthur, then, if you like. My name’s Lachlan.’
Arthur felt a small wave of shock run through him. It was less at the obvious impropriety of calling Hook by his first name than at the sudden transformation of his own. No one, in all his life, had called him Arthur or said, Artie…it’s no name for a man. For a small and magic moment it seemed to him that he stood as tall as Hook, that his thick stumps of legs had stretched themselves and raised him to some sort of equality. He felt notably confused.
On the way back to his cottage he watched Hook’s hard long-fingered hands on the steering wheel, saw the callouses, the old scars of rough use. ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ he said a little timidly, ‘you don’t look like the kind of man who’d…well, you look as if you’ve worked with your hands, seen a few rough times…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I’d have thought you’d emptied a few cans in your time…’
Hook changed gears, swung off the road into the laneway. The sun blazed at them through the windscreen, a momentary glorious blindness. ‘I don’t mind digging the holes,’ said Hook. ‘But once I crawled into a Japanese shit-pit and had to lie there all night. It took weeks to get rid of the smell…everything I tasted, touched…Jesus, for weeks…and ever since then…’
‘Oh,’ said Arthur, filled with an embarrassed awe.
‘I’ll put in a septic tank as soon as I can,’ said Hook. ‘But I need a house first.’
‘I dare say,’ said Arthur. Still feeling oddly tall, he ducked his head unnecessarily as he climbed out of the utility.
Inside the cottage, alone once more, he decided to boil the kettle again. Certain new dimensions had been added to the day, and he needed a little time to consider them.