Death of a Whaler (16 page)

Mt Isa, burning metal and dust. Flinch stands at the exit from the train station and sees the towers from the mines rising up out of the city like smoking sentinels. Mining cranes hover over the gashes in the distant landscape like long-necked vultures. He doesn't want to spend much time here. Nate's father had worked here, Nate had said, but they didn't live in Mt Isa, his old man preferring a dirt-cheap mortgage and an excuse to spend the working week away from his family, the evenings drinking and whoring in town. Not that Nate had cared anyway, he said; it was a rough place back then. Part oasis, part open wound. Established by a lonely fossicker who had ridden into the place on a horse called Hard Times, the nag's name like some self-fulfilling prophecy for the town for much of its settlement. It's a more prosperous place now that the bigger mines are set up. The miners do well and promise their wives just another year, just another year. During the day, the women sit in front of fans and water the wilting palm trees in their front gardens, work the cafes and pubs and hospitals, serve drinks and sew fingers back onto bloodied fists. Bar brawls in the rougher pubs become legend, something to aspire to on the weekends. There's a bit of spare cash to be had up here, for those willing to stick it out.

Duchess, Nate said, was a scab on the town's behind, in comparison.

Flinch finds a place that will rent him a car just a short walk from the train station. The girl behind the counter sizes him up and asks him to produce his licence twice before she lets him have the keys. He's hired a little Datsun. It was the most he could afford and the girl behind the counter assures him it will make the journey.

‘It's not that far,' she says. ‘Not much at the end of the road, though.' She sniffs and wipes her nose on her arm.

‘How do I get there?' Flinch asks.

‘Take the Duchess road.' The girl looks at him like he's got brain damage.

Flinch has brought a block of wood to tie to the clutch, like he does with Milly, and hewaits until the girl has left him alone with the car before he digs through his suitcase to find it. He straps it in place with his belt. His pants hang loose around his hips and when he gets into the car the hot vinyl sears his bare lower back.

He winds down the window. There's a map in the glove box and he sweats while he marks the roads of his journey with a red marker he brought especially for the purpose. The Datsun, to his delight, starts straight away when he turns the key in the ignition.

The country out here is dry and red. Spinifex and pale gums shimmer silver above the soil. The nests of termites rise out of the ground in the shapes of witches' hats and stooped men, some of them double the height of Flinch. On the side of the road, and often in the middle, roadkill in various states of decay is splattered, fur and blood and bone one big sizzling mess on the gravel. Crows feast on the hot meat like diners at a banquet, cuss and flap reluctantly to the side of the road when the Datsun passes.

It takes him just over two hours to get to Duchess. The road is hard going on the Datsun and the car is hot and shuddering a little by the time Flinch arrives. Flinch wonders if the girl at the car hire place has ever been out here. There is nothing much of Duchess. Nobody is around. He parks outside the pub. The dust is still rising around him when he gets out of the car.

He is the only person in the pub. He waits quietly propped against the bar for twenty minutes or so before he clears his throat and jangles his keys. A grey-haired woman wanders out from a back room behind the bar. She's in a singlet that is stretched over saggy breasts and a gut like a man's, a tea towel over one shoulder, a startled look on her face.

‘How long have you been here?' she says.

‘A bit,' says Flinch.

‘You need to sing out,' she says. ‘We don't get a lot of drop-ins.'

Flinch nods and puts his keys in his pocket.

‘Beer?'

‘Yeah, ta,' says Flinch.

The woman slams on a tap and the beer frosts the glass as it is poured.

‘A buck,' she says. She puts the beer in front of Flinch and he hands over the note, takes a long, hard gulp of his drink, empties it and puts it in front of her. She refills it.

‘Passing through?' she asks.

‘Kind of. I'm actually looking for someone who lives around here.'

‘Well I know most. Who you after?'

‘The Wests,' he ventures.

‘Wests. Aw yeah.' The woman waits.

Flinch drinks his pot and orders another.

‘The Wests live on a little place just a bit further up. Follow the road you're on, turn right at the first dirt road and then take your second left. It's the place with the green roof. White paint, what's left anyway. You from the hospital?'

‘No,' says Flinch.

‘From palliative care?'

‘Er, no. I'm an old friend of the family.'

The woman grunts.

‘Yeah, well, don't be expecting to be too long out there. The old man isn't up for much these days, doesn't have much energy for anything.' She lifts her eyebrows. ‘Might be a bit different from the way you remember him, eh?'

‘Yeah,' says Flinch. ‘Thanks.'

‘No worries. Good luck.'

‘Ta,' says Flinch. He puts a five-dollar note on the bar as he leaves.

ELEVEN

Flinch follows the woman's directions, the dust from the dirt road billowing behind the car, clouding his rear-vision mirror. The trees grow sparse, the ones still out here greying in the leaves. Along the way he passes a few small weatherboard houses on stilts, a rotting wooden and corrugated iron shed. But at the end of the road the woman described, he sees the house and knows it must be the one. Cracked green roof, white paint flaking like sunburn to reveal the pale, worn timber underneath. The rusted bodies of two vehicles are in the front yard. A truck of some sort and an old Hillman. Next to them lie dismantled engines, bolts and wires, bits and pieces of twisted metal, as if they have been gutted and left on display as some sort of warning. Flinch drives past the place slowly and pulls up a few hundred metres further on. He hasn't thought about exactly what he will say to Nate's parents, and realises now he is here that they too may blame him for Nate's death, even if he doesn't confess to it.

The beer has made him light-headed and he needs to pee. He gets out of the car and stumbles over to some nearby shrubs. As the spray lands on them, a scorpion darts out from underneath the shrubs and scuttles away. A crow caws overhead. There is, though, mostly silence, as if layers of dust have settled over everything, weighed down all signs of life. Flinch wonders how Nate spent his time here. Can't picture him in this environment, all his anxiety and energy like a whirlwind in this still dirt corner. The pages of his books browning with the soil on his fingers.

He returns to the car and reverses the entire way back up the dirt road until he is outside the house. The dust rushes into the car's open window, almost choking him, making his eyes water. He pulls the handbrake harder than necessary when he stops. He has to brush himself off when he gets out. Spits into the palms of his hands and rubs them through his hair. He walks up the pathway to the house quickly, taking the biggest steps he can manage, so that he doesn't have time to think about what he's doing and turn around.

The house sits slightly off the ground, but the steps to the veranda have decayed. Off to the side, there is a makeshift ramp, a couple of planks of wood nailed to the veranda. Flinch walks up them sideways to keep his balance. The front door is unlocked and hinged back. The screen door appears shut, but it moves slightly with the wind, clicking in and out of its latch.

Flinch knocks on the wall to the side of the door. Hurts his knuckles, makes little sound.

‘Hello there,' he calls in through the screen.

There is no answer.

He tries to make out what lies behind the screen, but all he can see is a dark hallway. An umbrella stand with a woman's dress hat hanging from it, a cardboard box with a white label on the side. In the next doorway, into what he assumes is the living room, streamers of coloured plastic hang fluttering in the breeze. To keep flies out, he gathers. It gives the place the feeling of a deserted carnival. He can't see what is beyond them.

He waits a while at the door before making his way back down the ramp. He stands looking at the house for a minute or two, and then decides to wander around to the back, in case someone is outside. The backyard is barren of any grass, just packed earth and, at one edge, taking advantage of a leaky garden tap, a sprawling lantana bush. There's a twisted clothes line, cords snapped and trailing on the ground. Another engine, tipped on its side, the metal glinting in the sunlight where it hasn't rusted. The sour smell of the lantana plant carried to him on the breeze. This isn't what he wanted for Nate. Not this place for his childhood. He had wished for him afternoon games of cricket, school friends who teased and laughed and swam in watering holes, a kitchen that smelt of roasting chook and apple tarts. A lush green backyard littered with toy trucks and plastic soldiers that sank into the lawn, footballs and a mother who tended scraped knees with the sting of Betadine, a kiss and a band-aid. He doesn't know why he dreamt these things up for Nate.

Behind him, a door clicks and he sees a shadow recede up a hallway. The steps to the back veranda are rickety but still there and he makes his way up them, expecting them to splinter. There is a screen door here, too, the screen torn in one corner, flopped over itself as if drooping in the heat.

‘Is anyone home?' Flinch calls into the cool dark inside of the house.

‘Coming.' A woman's voice. It makes Flinch catch his breath.

He hears her talking to someone, furniture being scraped across a hard floor, a man's raised voice.

‘Yes?'

She hovers in the shadow just inside. She is in a dressing gown. Greying hair in a bun. She is thin, like Nate; he can see her collarbone protruding below a wrinkled neck, and her fingers, all knuckle. In the mother he can see Nate's jittery, bird-like demeanour, the fusion of nerves and expectations. It's harder in her, though, more like sinew, as if she has been whittled down to pure anxiety.

‘Hello,' he says.

‘What do you want?'

‘Could I come inside for a moment? I have some news for you.'

She moves closer to the door.

‘We don't need any religion.' She is fiddling with the top button of her dressing gown. It is hanging from a thread, about to snap off.

‘Oh … no, that's not why I'm here.'

‘We won't buy anything. And we don't have money or valuables here either.'

‘I just have some news to tell you,' says Flinch, desperate. He doesn't want to say what he has to say out here, separated from her by the screen, exposed and dusty and sweating in the heat.

The woman shrugs and steps back.

‘Well, alright.' She opens the door and it swings inwards on one hinge.

‘Thank you,' says Flinch.

She turns her back on him and wanders down the hall into the living room and he follows. He sits on the couch, sinking into it and feeling a broken spring under his thigh. Yellowing lace doilies cover the headrests. On the wall, three chipped china ducks in decreasing sizes fly east. There are only a few pieces of furniture in the room. A rocking chair stacked with teddy bears. A coffee table with plastic legs and a fake wood veneer. Kewpie dolls in pink mesh tutus, the kind Flinch has seen dangling from sticks at fetes and fairs, line the windowsill. On the mantelpiece, a broken model plane and a candlestick, a few framed photos. The room is airless and congested. It smells to Flinch of urine and musty piles of newspapers. He has a sense of things trapped. The still ducks on the wall. Dust suspended in the air where the sun cuts to the floor with a beam.

‘Do you want a cuppa? Was making one anyway.' The woman is hovering near him.

‘Yes, that would be very nice.'

‘How do you have it?'

‘White with one.' The woman wanders back to the kitchen.

‘Thank you,' he calls after her.

Flinch gets up to take a closer look at the photos on the mantelpiece. One photo is of the finish of a horse race. The horse coming second has been circled with red pen. Underneath the photo the caption,
1st
Mighty High, 2nd Stormin' In, 3rd Janey's Surprise, Mt Isa
Country Cup, 10th October 1964
. Next to that, a photo of Nate. He's only about eight years old, but Flinch recognises him straight away, the long legs with protruding knees, the chin jutting out and up at a defiant angle. Squinting straight into the sun. There's another one of a younger Nate, nursing a toddler, a small girl, her hair in tiny curled blonde pigtails.

‘My children,' says the woman. She takes a seat in a worn, pilled armchair that groans when she leans back. Her dressing gown, faded paisley, slips apart to reveal flaky, mottled calves and white socks under ruby-red slippers. She smells like mothballs and potpourri. He suspects she wears this every day. Even in the heat. She has placed Flinch's tea on the coffee table.