Smoky Joe's Cafe (20 page)

The same is happening in America, we've lucked in, they're in the middle of the Presidential election and both the Republican and Democrat candidates make pronouncements, both promise they'll look into the Agent Orange issue the moment they get to the White House. The President promises he'll talk to Australia and politicians bring up the issue about Agent Orange in the House of Representatives. This is a festering sore
in America's own backyard and Congress decides it's time they tackled it once and for all.

Naturally all this takes months and meanwhile we're out on the road doing blood tests in one small town after another. There is also money being sent from everywhere, particularly from Americans.

During this period a leading Sydney newspaper commissions a survey looking into the poor health of Vietnam veterans and their children in the Sydney area. The preliminary findings of the survey indicate a high incidence of suicide among Vietnam vets, general poor health, psychological disorders and, among their children, a rate of birth defects above the national averages. Though they are only preliminary findings they cannot be easily ignored.

The survey causes a further uproar and again makes the international news and the Americans start to ask the same questions of their own veterans. The
Washington Post
commissions a project in the District of Columbia with almost identical results.

The story stays alive long after the governments of both countries would have hoped it would die down. Here in Australia the Vietnam Veterans Self-Help Association demands a royal commission. Too many people are asking too many awkward questions and the
government is forced to stop back-pedalling and do something constructive.

Meanwhile Shorty and Lawsy have become international spokesmen for our Vietnam vets. Wendy is in a league of her own. American women not only see her as a mother who is fighting for the life of her child, but as a feisty woman and a seeker after justice. She is someone who will fight for her man and all the other warriors who fought in Vietnam and still remain essentially herself. She is huge in America and her face appears on twenty different magazine covers, including
Time
. She's invited over to appear on ‘The Johnny Carson Show' and naturally she won't leave Anna so they send over a crew to interview her, with Johnny Carson speaking to her on the telephone.

I'm dead worried about her, she's under a lot of pressure, we both are, but mostly Wendy, and, frankly, I don't know how she withstands it all. The little blonde is stronger than even I thought she was and that's saying something.

Okay, enough of that. I'm starting to feel sorry for the Thompsons and that's just not on. So, accept that when I tell you the whole thing is huge, larger than life, you've got to believe me. You may even remember it yourself.

But on the Anna front it's not the same good news. We keep plugging away day after day in all the little towns and the bigger country centres. Sometimes we stay at the pub, that is if there is one, sometimes we're invited into people's homes and sometimes it's sleeping bags on the side of the road and a cup of coffee brewed for breakfast in the hope that we'll hit a small town with a cafe for a bit of mid-morning tucker.

Travelling with the Vets from Hell also has its moments, the boys like a drink at the end of the day and with a gutful o' booze there are the inevitable fights. At first the local cop would be called in by the publican but this didn't always have the calming effect desired. What's more, to put thirty bikies in the slammer for the night takes a bit of doing even if there's more than one cop about. Even though the scrap might be between two blokes with nobody else taking much notice, the moment the fuzz arrive it's one in all in, the boys in blue have to arrest everyone or nobody and that's got its complications. There's not too many country lock-ups can take a big mob, mostly they're designed to accommodate half a dozen or so Abos drunk and disorderly of a Saturday night. What's more there's not too much enthusiasm for the task when it's all said and done.

Shorty and me soon learn that it's back to Vietnam with these buggers, they'll accept discipline from their own but not from outside. First thing we do when we come into a new town is visit the local constabulary and explain the situation and do the same to the local publican. Any fuss in the pub or anywhere else they're to call Shorty, Bongface or me. Generally speaking it works out okay but occasionally I cop a slap or two I don't care for and am obliged to settle the matter on the spot. I'm a big bugger and they soon learn I can give as good as I get and Bongface can give a lot better. On the other hand Shorty is still the sergeant and even a drunken bikie knows better than to molest him.

What we can never really get over is the kindness country folk show towards us, the biggest hearts are in the dusty little towns that don't seem to have a good reason for being where they are. I guess I should expect it, Currawong Creek ain't exactly a metropolis and there's a residue of kindness there I know I, for one, don't rightly deserve.

We'd come into some fleabag town on the Sturt Highway, the temperature in the mid-thirties, and the people would come out and line up and joke about themselves, how they're nobody from nowhere, and tell you about a kid from the town who went to Vietnam
and how they're dead proud of him. Sooner or later he'd turn up, a vet wanting to talk to his own kind and it wouldn't be hard to tell that he was doing it rough like so many of us, hitting the booze or the pills or just being a loner. The town never put shit on him. Like the old bird in Currawong Creek said about me, he was one o' them for better or worse and he'd done his bit. Vietnam was never something to be ashamed about in the boonies. I guess a one-horse country town is no place for a weekend hippy or a protest march. Country folk know what kind of damage a war can do to a son or a father or even a grandfather, country women have been copping the effects of war on their men for three generations, from Gallipoli to Vietnam. It's not like the city, in the country everyone knows your business and when things get bad and the broken parts in your soul start to play havoc with your head and your heart, you can't hide the trauma in a suburban backyard shed.

Another thing that opened our eyes a fair bit in the bush was the way the Aboriginals hung out on the outskirts of the town, not really a part of it but the town dependent on their booze money and the shops selling them their tucker. Bongface once said to me, ‘Thommo, they hate us, but they need us real bad, ‘cause if we're not getting pissed and our gins are not there to show
them what happens to a sheila when grog gets a hold of her, they'd have to look at themselves a whole lot closer.'

I guess it's easy enough to see virtue in country people, thinking they've got things in their hearts that city folk have lost, but there's a lot happening in the bush that's not good, attitudes and that which you wouldn't want to teach to your kids. It's not all sweetness and light by a long shot.

When we get into a town Bongface makes a point of rounding up all the Aboriginal kids and putting on the gloves and having a bit of a spar with the older ones. Then letting them put the gloves on and have a bit of a go at each other, meanwhile coaching them and at the same time laughing a lot and talking to them about being proud to be black. He then brings them into the Anna-mobile for a check-up. Most have something that needs to be done, boils to be lanced and treated, problems with their ears, partial deafness being a big thing with black kids. They're written up and their card sent to the local health officer so they can receive further treatment.

After the black kids come the adults, lining up, wanting to have a blood test because of Bongface. On more than one occasion this causes a bit of a ruckus
among the white folk because there is this notion, not always without reason, that there's a lot of VD about among the blacks. How they think they're gunna catch it from standing next to an Aboriginal in a queue Christ only knows. Besides, it's not all that uncommon to find the same in a white bloke.

Generally speaking we're doing a fair bit of good. The Anna-mobile is doing a great job flushing out the Vietnam vets and their wives and kids. Mike McGraw is joined by two more doctors who served in Vietnam and, in most towns, the local doctor is grateful for the help and happy to cooperate with us. We're building a case to take to the government that can't be denied.

All this is well and good and a bloke feels a part of something half decent, the international media hasn't given up on us and most days we're good for a story, though not all of them are positive. They soon cotton on to the disparity between blacks and whites in the country towns and there's more than one story went out that wasn't going to do us any good nor is told with a totally fair perspective.

Racism is one of those things that brings out what Lawsy calls ‘the vicarious instinct' in reporters which sort of means they try to find the ugly and the unusual and make it seem like it happens every day. Still there's
a fair bit going on that's far from an exaggeration and we can only hope that things between black and white get a bit better in Australia and particularly in the bush.

After all, they're a part of us and we of them, no point carrying on like white is right and black is not, that's all bullshit anyway and don't do no good. There's as many white drunks in town as black, only the white blokes are better at hiding it, goin' home and beating up the missus in private instead of in public outside the pub like the black guy. Anyone with half a mind knows what's really going on.

Anna's time is running out. She's in remission but, with no T-cells to fight infection, the odds are that it'll be sooner rather than later that, even in the bubble, she'll catch something that will take her away from us. Even if she doesn't the doctors say that in the end the leukaemia will get her. Sometimes when we're camping out and I'm lying on the side of the road looking up at the stars I can't help thinking that the Big Boss up there doesn't give a shit.

Wendy now only leaves Anna's side to take part in media conferences, all of which take place in the hospital so that she's never far from our daughter. Like I said, I'm with the rig but whenever possible I go down to Sydney on the weekends. With Smoky Joe's closed for the duration, Lawsy fixed it so that the Vietnam Vets
Self-Help Association, which is now a registered charity, supports us. The hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been sent to Anna from all over the world have gone into the charity and Lawsy says, if we'd wanted to, we could have kept it all ourselves, so it's only fair. Though we're forced to accept it, Wendy and me don't like it one bit. No bastard wants to appear to be bludging. But, the truth be known, there's bugger all we can do, there's nothing in the bank and Wendy doesn't want me to sell Smoky Joe's. Not that a country cafe in a one-horse town would fetch much anyway.

It's nearly six months since we started on the road and still nothing. It all looks so bloody hopeless. If it wasn't for the bit of good we're doing, I reckon I'd chuck the whole thing in. I've got this monster dose of the shits and I'm feeling right sorry for meself and seriously thinking of giving up when we pull into a tiny little town named Daintree, near Port Douglas in Queensland. There's not a lot different about this place, a bit greener with rainforest and a nice beach with a few surfers and hippies about, bludging, on the dole no doubt. It's what Lawsy calls a place in the sun for shady people. Shit, why should I care, good on ‘em, my kid's gunna die, she's never going to crack a wave, bludge on the dole,
feel the warm tropical sun on her back, salt on her skin. What's more, my own health isn't all that grand neither and I'm worried, Wendy doesn't need a big useless bastard like me about, she's that bright she proved she could make it on her own. I know how loyal she is and that's getting to me as well. I'm scared she'll stick with me and in the process fuck up her own life. I've seen what's happened to some of the vets we've met on our travels, the human wrecks, grog, drugs, you name it, they're fucked and they're not coming back, you can see it in their eyes, they're living somewhere else. It's like seeing me own future. I'm sitting on a rock looking out at the ocean, gulls careening above me, hoping for a free feed while I'm thinking all this shit. ‘Better give it away, Thommo, time to go, mate,' I say aloud. ‘When Anna goes do the deed, hey.' I tell myself Wendy will be grieving for her daughter, best to double up, so she can get it over with as quickly as possible.

‘Hey there, Thommo!' It's Bongface come up back of me. ‘How ya been then?' he asks. ‘Nice day, hey?'

He must have sensed something because then he shuts up and comes to sit down beside me and is real quiet for a while, the both of us looking out at the ocean, young blokes on their surfboards, sun shining on wet shoulders. Then he lights two fags and hands me
one and we smoke, looking and saying nothing. After a long while he says, ‘Met someone today, reckons you and her are related.'

I don't bite and it's silence between us again.

Then, after a while, ‘She saw yer ugly mug on the box, reckons you're a dead ringer for her father, only you're a whitefella.'

‘She one of your mob then?' I say, not too interested.

‘Yeah, but she's got your name, Mona Thompson.'

I take a drag and exhale and look at him squiffy-eyed through the cigarette smoke, ‘So? It ain't exactly the world's most unusual name.'

‘True, but that's not all. She give me this picture, photograph.' Bongface laughs, ‘I could have been lookin' at you, only darker complexion.' He looks at me again, this time I can see he's dead serious, ‘Thommo, it
was
fuckin' you! I'm tellin' ya, mate.'

My heart begins to beat faster. Now I remember, Mona is a name used in our family from way back. I don't want to hope, but I can't help myself. ‘My great-grandfather's brother went walkabout with an Aboriginal woman not long after they arrived in Currawong Creek.' I look at Bongface. ‘Couldn't be, though, that was before the First World War.'