True West Page 14

  163

  DAVID WHISH-WILSON

  march. Stuck in a Cambodian pig pen. Questioned by English-

  speaking NVA officers. Treated like a dog, for two months. As SAS, he was a valuable source of information. Said he tried to kill himself with a stick, but most of the time he was bound to a post. Then he escaped, made his way back south, living off the land, keeping away from people.’

  ‘Get to it. What are you trying to say?’

  ‘I saw the report, son. It was regarded as a counter intelligence interrogation. Went on for weeks, over there in Vung Tau, on the RAAF base.’

  ‘You saying that he talked, and the North Vietnamese let

  him go?’

  ‘No chance of that. The report suggested that the likely

  outcome was that he talked, and got himself better conditions.

  Conditions that enabled the possibility of escape.’

  Lee couldn’t help himself. His fists were clenched. His face burning.

  ‘Ease up, son. What you got to understand is that while SAS

  troopers were trained to resist interrogation, every man has a breaking point. Nobody real y blamed your father, if he did talk. Like every other soldier, he wasn’t privy to operational matters. He went on patrol and did his job. There were no

  obvious incursions in the following months that suggested

  heightened intelligence of our operations. Nothing like that.’

  ‘Then what’s the point of telling me this? What does it

  prove?’

  Kinslow angled his head, weighing it up. ‘Your father was

  a broken man. My feeling is that he probably told the truth 164

  TRUE WEST

  to the best of his recollection. But there was something broke in his head, something he wasn’t looking at, or admitting to.

  And so he wasn’t trusted to go in the field again. He was kept segregated from every other serving man. That was his last

  tour. He spent the rest of his time, six weeks in country, under observation in a hospital. He was watched, very closely, just in case. There was a diagnosis made, if you’re interested, by one of the trick cyclists there. Why he got a medical discharge.’

  ‘He got a medical discharge because he was wounded. I

  seen the scars.’

  ‘That was self-inflicted, son. In the hospital. He was

  convinced that he had bullets inside him. He got himself a

  scalpel and went to town.’

  Lee felt sick in his stomach. There were tears starting in his eyes. He couldn’t let Kinslow see. ‘You’re trying to isolate me from my father.’

  ‘I understand why you’ d think that, but it ain’t it. Not at al .

  Greg Downs wants me to hand you over. We ain’t about to do

  that, not as long as you’re with us. So his men are here, in the city, looking for you. I wanted you to know. To keep away from the depot, where they’ll likely be looking. But that you can come to me, if you ever need help. Whatever anybody else says.’

  ‘I don’t care about the Knights. And I saw him, last night.

  My father.’

  Kinslow looked genuinely surprised, but only for a moment.

  ‘And what was your reading of him – the state of him?’

  Kinslow stared hard, and Lee stared back. Kinslow knew

  the answer to his question.

  165

  DAVID WHISH-WILSON

  ‘Take this any way you like,’ Lee said. ‘If you don’t give Greg Downs and the others what they want, they’ll come and take

  it from you. They’ll turn this depot into a bomb crater. You think Robbie would’ve told them where Frankie lives?’

  ‘Not even Robbie’s that stupid. Frankie’s … special. Any

  hurt came on her, Robbie knows that he’ d be dead.’

  Kinslow had only answered half of Lee’s statement. The

  part about the Knights taking what they wanted from him,

  unanswered. Which might mean that they’ d come to some

  kind of arrangement.

  ‘You just focus on your father, and the court case. The

  Attorney-General’s got a big stiffie for the Knights, which is why they’ve brought the trial forward. Case like this, normal y it’ d take months to come to trial. But I guess they’re happy with what your father’s given them, in exchange for his freedom. I were you, I’ d wait until after the formalities, which by the look of it won’t take long. In the meantime, keep your head down and do what you’re told. I hear you’ve been doing good. Keep it up. We got an election to run. Whatever the outcome, then the big push.’

  Kinslow thrust out his paw and Lee shook it. Both men

  glanced across the lot to see if anyone was looking. Kinslow scouting for the law, and Lee the outlaw.

  166

  16.

  Lee lost all motivation to get out on the road and earn.

  There was only one thing on his mind, which was to return

  to Frankie’s for a knock of the hammer to dampen the anger

  he felt at Brad, and now Kinslow. Were his father’s stories al bul shit? Lee hadn’t told the truth to Kinslow, out of habit. His father had in fact talked at length about Vietnam, which was the spur that made Lee want to know more, and get books

  out of the library. His father wasn’t welcome at the local RSL, after some dispute years ago, and he wondered now if that

  was because of his being captured, and his mental breakdown.

  Which he didn’t know was true, either.

  He had no reason to trust Kinslow over his father.

  Lee found a vein in the back of his wrist and sent the plunger home. He didn’t get the old rush of euphoria, but instead an instant sense of gravity that pulled him down onto Frankie’s bed.

  Most of his father’s stories were of stalking the rubber

  167

  DAVID WHISH-WILSON

  plantations and skirting the edges of rice paddies, watching and waiting. He described the things you could eat in the

  jungle: the channel catfish in the small streams that could be killed with a rock. The swamp eels with their scaly, snake-like skin, blunt snouts and beady eyes, which breathed air and crawled over land. The larvae in the rotting trunks. Bamboo shoots and turtles. Fungi and algae.

  SAS troopers had their dry rations but supplemented where

  they could. His father spent plenty of time explaining to Lee how they made hoochies in the jungles out of local fern, if possible on a terrace hacked into a hil side, so that they could roll out of bed and be away.

  They never lit fires or smoked. They used sign language.

  They buried everything. They had been told that white men

  had a pungent smel . After a few days on patrol they concealed their body odour by scouring their armpits with mud. They

  were supposed to be invisible. To observe and report back. To call in hellfire on the positions they were observing. To track and wait for reinforcements.

  But they were not immune to detection. On occasions they

  were themselves tracked, or observed by hostile vil agers. One of Lee’s father’s best mates, a young corporal from Townsville, fell into a concealed pit that was lined with shit-smeared

  stakes. He was staked through the bel y and groin and Lee’s father had to climb down into the pit and smother the man’s screams until they could administer morphine and staunch

  the bleeding. The young corporal died during the extraction of the stake from his groin, rupturing an artery. They held 168

  TRUE WEST

  him down as they tried to find the artery with forceps, to

  pinch off its end, but the wound was deep and he bled out

  in minutes. Lee’s father threw him on his back and fireman-

  carried him three kilometres to the nearest LZ.

  Then there were the firefights and the long nights when

  the four troopers would sit in the darkness, knowi
ng they

  were being tracked. The jungle raucous with insect life and the foot pads of animals and men. Rain always a blessing,

  allowing them to move. There were the days spent camped

  next to a suspected munitions trail, Claymore mines angled

  out from the base of trees, scissor legs planted in the dirt, the seven hundred ball bearings aimed in enfilade down the

  track. When detonated, everything within a hundred yards

  and less than two metres tall was shredded in a blasting of white noise and black percussion. They liked to fire the mine at mid-range, in case the boxes humped by the VC contained

  explosives. Upon detonation, the human form was turned

  into a red mist that hung in the air as long as the noise

  reverberated through the forest, settling like frost smoke

  onto the smashed ground.

  There were occasional stories that Lee’s father told more

  than once, but there weren’t many. He talked about the

  concealed pit, and holding his friend’s mouth while he bled out, the Vietcong company they were tracking only a few

  hundred metres to their north. The dying man understood,

  gritted his teeth and tried to stay quiet.

  He never told Lee the man’s name.

  Jack Southern did tell Lee about one Claymore ambush on

  169

  DAVID WHISH-WILSON

  a jungle trail that led into a rubber plantation near Nui Dat.

  Lee’s father held the clacker that was joined to the firing wire that was fixed to the detonator cap, which unleashed a wall of angry metal on a dozen male and female Vietcong irregulars

  in black pyjamas. They were thought to have scouted the

  Australian base. After the familiar explosion and shower of dirt there was only the wet sound of the soaked rainforest

  and the watery bodies that were atomised.

  Lee’s father got a strange light in his eyes when he told

  these stories, even as his voice became uncharacteristically quiet. They sat around the campfire, Lee stoking the fire and dropping sandalwood sticks onto the coals because that kept his father calm, reminding him that he was at home and safe on his own country, where he was no longer a hunter and no

  longer being hunted.

  He had used those exact words.

  They didn’t mean much to Lee at the time, but they meant

  something now.

  If what Kinslow said was true, parts of Lee’s father had never returned home. Parts of him were still up there, surviving on the land, being interrogated and tortured, hunting and being hunted. Killing, and getting ready to be killed.

  What he was preparing for, back here.

  When it all came home.

  It explained a lot about how they’ d lived.

  The front door opened and a shadow crossed the jamb

  of Frankie’s door. It was Brad. He held up a flashlight and a balaclava. When Lee didn’t move, Brad shone the light over

  170

  TRUE WEST

  his face, and his works on the bedside table. Then he shone the torch directly into Lee’s eyes, reassured by what he saw.

  ‘How’ d you deal with the chogie?’

  ‘I took him home. He’s not gonna talk.’ Lee trying to keep

  his voice even, to disguise the hatred he felt. They could get to his father, he’ d seen that now.

  ‘It’s not another visit with your dad, if that’s what you’re wondering. Get dressed. We got a job. Something new.’

  Lee turned on the bedside light. He stared at Brad, reading him for hidden motivations. They’ d never done a job at night before. Brad’s mouth was sucked in, eyes bulging. He started working his jaw and Lee understood that he was high again.

  After what Brad had done last night, that meant nothing was certain. His shoulders were hunched like a fighting cat.

  Brad closed his eyes to calm himself, cracked his wrists.

  Then nothing but the sound of his whistling breath. ‘I know what you’re thinkin, but you don’t have a choice. You know

  that we got access to him, right? You know what that means, right, if you aren’t useful?’

  ‘ He’s useful to you in some way. What you need me for?’

  ‘You’re useful to us, too, kid. You’ve done good work these past weeks. You done him proud.’

  ‘I guess that’s why he told me to run.’

  Brad stood over him, but not too close. ‘You don’t want to

  do that, son. That would be a big mistake. There are things that we can do to make your father’s life good, and there are ways to make him suffer. I can’t say it any plainer than that.’

  ‘I want to see him again.’

  171

  DAVID WHISH-WILSON

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. But get your arse into gear. We don’t have a lot of time.’

  Lee watched Brad’s face. Behind the anger was the same

  burning hatred that he too felt. It had always been there, but hidden. Lee thought again about Kinslow and the Knights,

  and what arrangements might’ve been made.

  They were using Lee to bargain with his father. They were

  using his father to bargain with Lee. But what did they

  want from them? From his father, most likely, his weaponry

  connection. But from Lee?

  ‘Sure. Give me five.’

  172

  17.

  Brad was driving a stolen Mazda shitbox, making the right

  moves with his signals, keeping under the limit. They were

  driving west toward Fremantle on Canning Highway, the

  scent of wet grass on the wind, the seaweed smell of the nearby river. Brad looked at his watch and turned on the radio, set to 6PR. They hadn’t spoken since leaving the house.

  ‘I don’t get you, kid. Most of the fel as that come to the

  movement are lookin for the brothers and fathers they never had, and the rest of ’em are lookin for a regular opportunity to fight. But you. What do you believe in? What are you planning on doin with your life, when we got this happenin –’

  Brad stopped himself at the sound of Kinslow’s name, there

  on the radio, being introduced by Howard Sattler.

  ‘Holy shit. Turn it up.’

  Lee did as asked. Kinslow sounded comfortable and

  confident. He thanked Sattler for the opportunity to get his point across, introducing himself as the leader of the APM

  173

  DAVID WHISH-WILSON

  and candidate in the forthcoming election.

  ‘This has never happened before, Lee. This is big.’

  Lee was still thinking about Brad’s question, and what he

  believed in.

  No good answer to that question.

  He kept picturing his father, in his isolation cel , coming off the gear. The suffering and desperation.

  Lee had always believed what his father believed, but now

  he wasn’t sure what that was.

  Kinslow was warming to the task of fending off Sattler’s

  interruptions. Right there, on the airwaves, carried on the warm evening wind across the city, like a patient and warm-hearted guest, Kinslow’s deep and reasonable voice began

  laying out the future of the movement. ‘Wel , yes, Howard, I do call myself a national socialist. With an emphasis on both the national and the socialist. Globalisation has diminished national sovereignty, empowering transnational corporations who don’t care about people, disempowering our elected

  governments. Only a national socialist government in Western Australia will genuinely care for the interests of the West Australian people, because we’re the only voices speaking

  against global capital and the power of banks –’

  ‘But you advocate the overthrow of our democratical y

  elected government, you’re demanding –’

  ‘We’
re not demanding anything, Howard. We’re registered

  as a political party. We’re participating in democracy. But let me tell you this. What we have now isn’t democracy. What

  we have is politics, and politicians acting on behalf of vested 174

  TRUE WEST

  interests, with a mind only to getting re-elected. What we have is the il usion of democracy, and the most il usory thing of al is when your politicians tell you that they can keep you safe, because they can’t keep you safe. Because this is no longer a nation. This is a market. This is a pool of docile consumers.

  What this country needs, going forward, is not politicians, but leaders.’

  ‘By that you mean white leaders, and white citizens.’

  ‘That’s correct. You see, Howard, the health of global

  capitalism depends upon unending growth, and most of al

  upon population growth. Free-market capitalism’s future

  therefore assumes a brown world. Whites are the only ones on the planet responsibly managing their populations. The horse has already bolted for the browns and the yellows and the

  blacks. With population decline in the West, capitalism wil demand immigration from brown countries to top up white

  populations, to keep up economic growth. And then there is

  the corruption and the mismanagement of all the countries

  outside of the West. Theft and ineptitude on a grand scale. This creates instability, warfare and competing for scarce resources.

  You already see it in the countries bordering Europe and North America. Overpopulation. Poverty. Misery. It’s just common

  sense that tel s you that one day Europe will be overrun, and America will be overrun, because they’re unwilling to secure their borders. It happened to the Roman Empire when they

  lost control of their borders, and the same will happen again.

  It’s not a pretty picture, our future, Howard, if we allow the status quo to continue. The world will continue to be trashed 175

  DAVID WHISH-WILSON

  to benefit a wealthy few. But we are an island, with borders that can be secured. We have an opportunity to save ourselves, and look to our native capacity to organise and adapt and invent, planning for a safe, viable and sustainable future –’

  ‘And how exactly do you plan to realise that, when –’

  ‘Thank you for that question, Howard, I was just getting