True West Page 13
Brad stood between them. Lee’s father put his cuffed hands
out, a question. Brad nodded, and Lee shook his father’s
hands, looked into his eyes, didn’t like what he saw. Shame there, and a diamond of light, the beginning of tears.
Then the screw took him by the shoulder and led him away.
He didn’t turn back while the door was opened. He was pushed through, and then the door was shut.
‘Take the note out of your pocket. The one your father gave you.’ Brad smirked, his hand out, but thought better of it.
‘Read it aloud.’
Lee took out the tightly folded stick of paper. His father’s spidery handwriting on a corner ripped from a red lined
sheet. ‘It says … Right enough in here. Under the pump, as you’ d expect. Never mind about me.’
Lee passed it over. Brad read it again and poked Lee in the chest, leaned closer. ‘But you’re not going to RUN, are you, Lee? Not if you want to see your father again.’
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The TRG officer tapped his watch, went to the door. He
pressed a buzzer, turned off the lights.
Lee was grateful for the darkness. Now he could wipe his
eyes.
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14.
Brad and his ex-army buddies had rigged up a winch to get
the engine out of Brad’s Charger. Lee stood and waited while they broke it down on a tarp on the front lawn. He was there because Brad wanted to talk to him about a development with his father. Lee was hoping for another note, or the promise of further visits, but when Lee asked, Brad muttered under his breath and reached for a socket. He and his mates were on the tail end of an all-nighter – Lee knew the signs. Bleary red eyes, shaking hands and talking through gritted teeth and clenched jaws.
Nol amara was mostly a public housing area and there
were a lot of blacks and Vietnamese in the other houses on
the street. They walked past and looked at the white men
and their oil-stained hands sweating in the sun, until Brad or one of his friends noticed them and then they were rained with abuse. The tarp beside the Charger was piled with tyre irons, heavy spanners and lump hammers, and nobody said
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anything back. Brad had earlier told Lee that he refused to move to another suburb because he wanted to be reminded,
every day, of what their world would one day look like. A few white men surrounded by darkies and chinks.
On his way to Nol amara, Lee had stopped at a Beaufort
Street deli to buy a coffee and some smokes. Over the past
week he’ d noticed how quickly the anti-Asian posters on the bins, phone booths, electricity exchange boxes and vacant
shopfronts had been torn away or painted over, but a new set of the same posters had been put up last night. Lee watched the reactions of the mainly elderly Asian men and women as they noticed the posters. Every one of them ducked their heads
and looked away until they noticed the next sign, and then
the next, their shoulders slumped and not meeting the eyes of those approaching. Lee wasn’t the only person to watch their reactions. He saw one young man in a bus driver’s uniform
smirk and mutter something under his breath at a passing old lady, who looked to the ground and didn’t respond. It wasn’t hard to imagine how she felt – made unwelcome in her own
country. If there had only been one poster Lee might have torn it down, but there were dozens on this block, and hundreds
further along the street.
Lee finished his cigarette. Brad was elbow-deep in the engine block and feeling around for metal shavings. He looked up
and told Lee to get him and the others a beer.
One thing that last night’s prison meeting demonstrated
was the reality of his father’s vulnerability. Brad obviously had contacts in the TRG and among the guards. His father
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would likely be held in the Seg, the most secure facility there, a prison within the prison, but the Knights too had contacts in the custodial service. If they learned where Jack Southern was imprisoned, then they’ d find a way to get at him.
Lee went inside to get the beers. He opened the fridge
door and heard moaning from the laundry that led onto the
backyard. In the laundry was a man bound to a chair, wearing the black hood. His feet had been burned. The familiar black carbon residue from a zippo lighter framed the red welts on the soles of his curled feet. The big toe on his right foot was bloody. The toenail was missing. Lee pulled off the hood.
A young Chinese or Vietnamese man looked at him with
unfocused eyes. His cheekbones were bruised and there was
blood around his mouth.
‘Please. Let me go. I won’t tell police. I have money. I cal my parents.’
Lee tossed the hood into the laundry sink. He returned to
the fridge and got a sixpack of Emu Bitter, went back outside.
Brad was speaking, his voice spidery with fatigue, the
speed wearing off. Lee needed to be careful. He put the beers on the tarp and stood back, waited for the rant to end. Brad’s mates rolled their eyes – they didn’t need to hear it again.
‘I’ve travelled to all the shitholes of this world, and all of it’s a shithole compared to what we got here. The people here
think that their wealth means that they’re strong, that it’ll keep them safe, but they’re not, and it won’t. They think they want democracy, because it’s the best system for the weak
to lord it over the strong. But they’ll give up democracy in 154
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an instant as long as they don’t lose their cars, their houses and holidays. As long as it’s someone else getting kicked, and not them. Deep down, your average man just wants a leader.
Stability. To see the same face and know the job is being done.
We can provide that certainty. And those who don’t like it
can fuck off. Mark my words. Within thirty years, whites
will be a minority in this country. Asians are better workers and consumers, and that’s all that any capitalist society asks of its people. Whites will be useful in the army, because that’s our nature, but we won’t have any real power. We got to –’
Lee let the words wash over him until Brad lost his train of thought.
‘The man inside. I’m taking him to the hospital.’
Brad laughed. ‘The fuck you are. That slopehead spoke back
to me.’
Lee kept his voice even. ‘Yeah, I know, but that was last
night …’
Lee let the words hang, looking around at the faces of
Brad’s friends. None of them spoke against him. Lee could
imagine how it went down. Seemed like a good idea at the
time. Brad all fired up and wanting to demonstrate how they used to interrogate kaffir prisoners in Africa. Brad’s friends were ex-army, but too young to have seen war. They wouldn’t have seen that kind of pain inflicted, heard those sounds.
Brad kept ratcheting a small bolt on a rocker cover.
‘You know where he lives, right?’ Lee said.
Brad laughed. ‘Fucken oath we do. And that he’s got two
sisters. His father’s got a barber shop in Northbridge.’
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‘So he’s not gonna talk.’
Brad looked to his mates. Mick, the screw, nodded. They
were supposed to be professionals, and Brad had put them at risk.
‘Alright then, fucken take him. I’ d forgotten he was there.
Save me the trouble of wringing his gook neck, diggin a grave.
But if he talks, it’s on you. We’ll all say that you were here. That you did the burnin, took off his toenail.’
and hands, but the man didn’t get up. His eyes didn’t believe.
He cowered whenever Lee moved.
He was broken.
Lee held up the hood. ‘I’m going to take you home. You
don’t talk, right? They weren’t joking about your family. You seen already. These are bad men.’
The man nodded.
‘Can you walk? Your feet …’
The man got up quickly, braced himself on the sink, putting weight onto the outsides of his feet. He didn’t appear to be in any pain. He was still in shock.
‘Put this on. They need to see that it’s on.’
The man accepted the hood, slipped it onto his head, the
heavy material settling on his shoulders.
Lee took the man’s arm and draped it around his neck.
They made slow time out into the backyard, the man crying
inside the hood. Lee opened the back gate and they entered
the garage where his truck was parked. Lee didn’t know what he’ d do if Brad changed his mind. He got the man up into
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the cab’s passenger seat, went around to the driver’s side, cranked the engine and reversed into the sunlight. Brad and his friends were sprawled in a circle, smoking and finishing their beers. None of them looked as Lee rolled into the street, changed gear and drove away.
‘I’ll take you to the hospital,’ he said when they reached the first corner.
The man was still crying, gently now, his shoulders trem-
bling. ‘Please. No hospital. Take me to my parents. I don’t want my wife, children, to see.’
Lee memorised the Balcatta address, which wasn’t far.
‘Why do you help me? Why are you friends with those
men?’
‘They’re not my friends.’
‘But you know them.’
Lee didn’t answer. The pity he’ d felt for the man and the
disgust he felt toward Brad were building into a fierce anger.
His fingers were clenched on the wheel, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. Everything he thought of saying sounded
like a justification.
‘Why they do this to me?’
Lee patted the man’s shoulder. This time, he didn’t flinch.
Lee pulled off the hood and slung it out the window. The
man looked straight ahead. Lee didn’t reply, but thought
instead of Brad, and Robbie; Greg Downs and Danny Hislop.
Men who enjoyed hurting people.
Lee didn’t believe in evil. Their cruelty had nothing to do with a transcendent being, or even the poison of their beliefs.
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He thought of Nietzsche, and the man beating the horse.
‘I’m sorry’, he said quietly, and then, ‘what’s your name?’
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Lee stopped at the Osborne Park depot to fill his truck. He’ d helped the Vietnamese man to his front doorstep, and rung
the bel . Lee would be remembered, but didn’t care. The man, whose name was Robert, had passed out in the truck, head
nodding and sliding in his seat. He’ d been tied to a chair overnight and tortured – sleeping not a priority when you
think it’s your last night on earth. Robert’s parents lived in an old salmon-brick house with a red-painted driveway and
planter boxes filled with herbs. A silky terrier yapped as Lee helped Robert down the path made of concrete pavers. The
doorbell didn’t work, and Lee rapped his knuckles on the
security screen. The silky continued to yap and the house
smelled of dog and herbs he couldn’t name. He heard a door
open and bare feet on the lino floor. An old woman looked
at them both and the truck on the verge, narrowing her eyes until she saw that her son was hurt.
She’ d yelped, put her hands to her mouth. An old man
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pushed past her and opened the door. Lee unlocked Robert’s
arm from around his neck and gave the arm to his father. The old man’s eyes said that he’ d seen some things in his lifetime.
Nobody spoke, and Lee had backed away.
*
When the Ford’s tank was ful , Lee capped the mouth and
replaced the nozzle. He kept his back to the depot office. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone, didn’t trust himself to hold his tongue.
He hadn’t seen Kinslow much over the past weeks. There
was an election coming up, and Kinslow and his boys were
busy with their poster campaign. They were also distributing pamphlets in letterboxes that lately carried a picture of
Kinslow standing beside one of his trucks. He was running as a candidate for the APM, the Australian Patriotic Movement.
A smiling working-class white man and small-business
owner, worried about jobs for the young, when so many Asian migrants were moving in and stealing them.
The True West guard dog, Bessie, a bulldog who’ d been
sleeping on her chain, stood and shivered and went over to
the shed beside the depot office. Lee locked the bowser just as Kinslow emerged, smoking a cigarette. He waved Lee over, as inscrutable as always. If he was angry at Lee for helping himself to the depot fuel and keeping his tow earnings to
himself, he kept his counsel.
Kinslow ground out his ciggie with the toe of his boot,
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the shed it’ d been decked out with Nazi and Southern Cross flags, and a framed picture of Hitler. Shooting targets, with their Asiatic faces and bodies riddled with holes taken from some army gun range. Malcolm Fraser, the Liberal PM who’ d
let in all the Vietnamese boat people, was represented on the dartboard.
But now it was empty except for trestle tables laden with
posters and pamphlets, maps of the local streets and a bubbling urn on milk crates in the corner.
Kinslow saw the look on Lee’s face and nodded. ‘Don’t
worry, we sweep it for bugs every day. We’ve found three so far. They’re likely the ones they want us to find, to keep us nervous, but I’m sure there aren’t any others. Why do you
think that is?’
‘Why use a bug when you have an informer, or an undercover
agent in the ranks?’
‘Go to the top of the class. You look a bit angry, son. What’s goin on?’
Lee ignored the question. ‘You know who it is? The
informer?’
‘No, we don’t. Strangely enough, it doesn’t real y matter. We know who it isn’t, which is the important thing.’
Lee got out a cigarette and Kinslow nodded him toward the
door. ‘The ink and whatnot is pretty flammable.’
‘What do you want?’ Lee asked.
Kinslow looked hard at Lee. ‘I got a warning. A personal
call from Greg Downs.’
‘His cal s would be monitored, wouldn’t they?’
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‘No. Not at Fremantle Prison. He gets his cal s, like everyone else.’
It was a stupid question to ask, but Lee had wanted to delay, to allow the news to sink in. ‘Does he know where I am?’
‘Yes. His lawyer received a call from an anonymous source.’
‘One of your boys. Robbie, would be my guess.’
‘Yeah, most likely.’
‘What did you say?’
Kinslow looked onto the empty lot, all his trucks out on the streets. ‘That’s not the right question.’
‘Alright, what did he offer?’
Kinslow sniffed, spat out the door, thought about it for a
long time. ‘I told you that I knew your father, in Nam.’
‘Yeah, you did.’
‘He talk about what happened up there?’
‘Hardly at al . Just how much he missed my mother. What
he learned about the resilience of the Asiatic races.’
Kinslow’s smile was mirthless. ‘Yeah, we all learned about
that, sure enough.’
‘What then?’
‘What he’s doing now – locked away somewhere, ratting on
his mates. It’s not the first time.’
Lee controlled his breathing, ironed his hands on the seams of his trousers.
‘He might’ve told you what we did to Vietcong prisoners.
And what we wouldn’t do, we handed over to the South
Vietnamese to do, or the Americans. The commies, in turn,
tended not to take us prisoners either. We knew that if we ever 162
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got caught, we were dead. It was a great motivator, I can tel you.’
‘There were no Australian POWs in Vietnam.’
‘You read that in a book?’
It was true. Lee’ d read every damn thing he could on the
war.
‘Official y, that’s correct. There’s still a few MIA, and that’s what your father was, for four months. I wasn’t there when it happened. He was on a long-range patrol, got in trouble, it happened all the time. But for some reason, that day the US
artillery didn’t come pounding in like usual. A chopper was sent in for a very hot extraction. Your father was last seen hanging from a rope, presumed shot, because he fell back into the jungle, a drop of thirty feet. There was heavy fire, heavy rain, and he was left behind. No trace of him when they went back with a full company and APCs the next day. Then, four
months later, he comes wandering out of the bush, naked as
the day he was born. Long hair and beard. Thinned out and
sick, but not a scratch on him.’
Kinslow paused, licked his lips, spat again into the lot. ‘I was a junior officer in Intelligence, son, fresh out of Duntroon.
Not directly involved with the debrief, but well aware.’
‘Aware of what?’
Lee’s voice, too harsh – to mask his desire to know.
‘Like I say, the commies weren’t in the habit of taking Aussie prisoners. Your father, he was a mess. Mental y, I mean.
Physical y, he was malnourished, but there were no signs of torture. He claimed that he’ d been taken up north, forced