The Big Whatever (20 page)

She kept reading, with way too much relish for my liking. “‘Parker has recently experienced some success in the rock music scene, playing organ with Melbourne pop group Oracle. The group's leader Bobby Boyd commented, “Mel Parker has played a couple of dates with the group. We always thought he was one of the great old characters of the discotheque scene. We had no idea he was involved in crime and drugs.'”

I stood by the sink watching them, noting their childish excitement. There was no pretence that it was about the money any more. It wasn't even about getting away. That's when I knew our paths would diverge. And soon. Knew it for certain. The turning point. For me, for my story. Big changes not far off now. I wanted out.

A couple of hours later we split. We left the stolen VW at the cabin and all crowded into my car. There was a mile of dirt road between the shack and the Hume Highway. Halfway along, we came face to face with another car, a new, dull green Holden. Staring at us from behind the wheel, a uniformed cop.

I reversed back a few yards. Cathy leaned out and took a pot shot. I drove around the car, couldn't see the driver now. I thought maybe she'd hit him, but a minute later I saw him in the rear view mirror, coming up fast.

“Pull up!” said Jimmy.

I did. He and Stan tumbled out of the car and started shooting. The cop skidded to a halt well behind us. The lads started to run towards the cop car, which was now reversing away from them. I heard more gunshots, then saw in the rear view a cloud of steam rising from the bonnet of the police car.

Stan and Jimmy trotted back, hopped into the car. “He's all right,” said Stan, puffing. Our reasoning as we drove away, the cop hadn't had any idea we were notorious bank robbers. Maybe investigating a reported break-in at the holiday cabin. Maybe something entirely unrelated. But they'd be on to us now.

We drove for half an hour. Our plan was to get out of the area before we stole another car. The police would assume we were heading north, we hoped, so we headed south instead, back towards Melbourne.

We stopped at Glenrowan and Stan made some calls. We filled up and headed off again. Stan was cagey, but said to keep heading towards Melbourne. An arrangement had been made.

The mood in the car was grim. No chat. Me behind the wheel, thinking. Then a little while later, a strange feeling.

“We can't go on,” I said.

“Here we go,” said Cathy. “Why not?”

“I . . . I don't know.” I turned to Stan. “Who'd you ring back there?”

A long sigh. “Vic. He's bringing us a clean car. We just have to make it to Violet Town.”

“Something's not right,” I said.

Jimmy, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned to me. “What's not right?”

“Don't know. It's just not right.”

Jimmy shook his head. “It's
all
not right. Nothing is right. Our best chance is to make it to Violet Town quick as we can, then lay low until we hook up with Vic.” He glanced at me again.

“Drive on,” he said. Resigned. Like he knew already it was going to shit.

THE WANGARATTA BOOK OF THE DEAD

A hot day. Blazing sun. I was in the middle of a wide, flat paddock. Driving a tractor (an old Fordson, if you're interested, my eager young collectivists). I was wearing a faded work shirt, dusty trousers, a battered straw hat grubby with sweat. A line of trees way off in the west, some low hills to the south. To the east, a house and shed.

I put the brake on, turned off the engine, got down from the tractor and walked the three hundred yards to the buildings. In an iron shed, a swarthy old man was bent over a bench and vice – a sour, snaggle-toothed old cunt, if ever there was one. He looked my way then scurried to the back of the shed and out the door. I called to him. No answer.

I walked around the property. It was a dump. A couple of tumbledown sheds, rusty water tanks and a small kitchen garden out back of the house. A snarling cur on a chain.

I went to the front of the small house, opened the screen door, poked my head in. Dark and dank inside. I let go of the door, and walked around the side, to a little outbuilding twenty yards away. Unpainted, rundown. An old cloth over a broken windowpane.

Inside, a chair and a little table with a kero lamp on it. A stretcher bed. Next to the bed an upturned packing case with a candle on it, and a copy of the
I Ching
.

Under the bed was my old overnight bag. Inside it was my typewriter and a change of clothes. A wad of money too, bound in rubber bands, stuffed into a manila envelope. Under the money was a gun. And a folded piece of paper. With a diagram on it. Very detailed, in my hand. A scrawly main road. An arrow pointing to the right labelled “W-town approx 35 miles.” A little house marked on one side of the road, a spot marked “Black Rock” on the other. A turn-off, a track, a cattle grid. A bridge over “Seven Mile Creek.” A bend in the path. A crudely drawn tree (“stand of coolabahs”) and a big circled “Dig for H, 3 ft” at the corner where
four paddocks met up. I wigged that it was some kind of ye olde buried treasure map.

I returned everything to the bag and slid it back under the bed. Noticed a stack of twenty or thirty yellowing newspapers there too. I pulled out the top one and looked at it.
The Sun
, Melbourne, Thursday, May 21, 1970. I put it back.

I went out to the paddock again, over to the tractor. It was an old crank job, but I knew how to start it. I climbed up behind the wheel and put the thing in gear. I'd been midway through harrowing the paddock prior to sowing the next crop. Dig, I'd never driven a tractor in my life, never had the slightest interest in agriculture. But here I was. And I knew what to do.

I spent the rest of that day on the tractor, going up and down over the same ground, exposing the old growth to the sun to kill it off. When the sun got low I walked back to the sleepout. On the step was a plate with a clean cloth over it. A meal of chops and potatoes.

I had a wash under a bucket suspended from a tree branch, went back inside and lit the kero lamp, picked up the
I Ching
. I cast the coins:
Hexagram 36. Darkening of the light. In adversity it furthers one to be persevering
.

Next morning there was a bowl of porridge outside the door. I ate it, went out to the paddock and continued harrowing.

I didn't catch a glimpse of the old bloke all day, but there was a meal outside the cabin again that night. Again I cast the
I Ching
, as I sensed I had done every night for a long time now. I got another nondescript, business as usual, go with the flow kind of message, something about working within limitations. Turned in, got up the next morning, worked the tractor again all the next day. Finished that paddock and moved onto the next.

It went on like that for a week. I was conscious, fully aware, and I knew my daily routine unerringly. But that was all. The stuff in the bag, the money, the gun, the map – I
knew at some deeper level it was mine, but I had no idea what any of it meant. I didn't know my name, or where I was, how I'd got there, how long I'd been there. But that didn't bother me. It was like being in a dream – there's some far-fetched shit going on, but you just cop it sweet, go with it, because that's what the logic of the situation dictates. I'd catch an occasional glimpse of the old troll, but he kept well clear. Which didn't bother me.

So there I was, being the farmhand. At odd moments the big thing, the Great Beast, Me and My History, would loom, but when that happened I'd just get on with the routine, and everything would settle again.

The days blanked themselves out, Each evening I had trouble remembering long parts of the day just completed – but sitting on a tractor in the sun all day will do that to you anyway, I guess.

The fog lifted slowly and unevenly. After about a week I knew I was Mel Parker, long-time ivory tickler and string picker. A day or two after that I remembered I had been a pop star of sorts, if only briefly. The rest was a mess.

I had questions now. I bailed up the old bastard the next morning when he bought the porridge around.

“Who are you?” I said.

He bared his teeth and backed away from me, then hobbled off muttering to himself.

Next night I waited inside my door, and the moment I heard him put my dinner down on the step I jumped him, got him in a headlock. He was a hundred and ten years old but a wiry little bastard. He squirmed and twisted, bit me hard on the wrist, drawing blood. I gave him a good swipe. It took another one to settle him down, but then he went still.

“Who are you?” I shouted at him.

He looked at me, said nothing. I backhanded him. “Who are you?”

He shook his head. I let him go. He stood back a few feet then spat out a rush of angry, excited words. Guttural,
foreign. No lingo I could recognise. He went on and on – much to tell. Kept coming back to the old crazy loco gesture, finger circling at the side of his head, then pointing at me. And the sign to ward off evil. Other gestures indicating crazy behaviour. Sickness. Driving the tractor. Him cooking meals for me. Me digging in the dirt. Work, eat, sleep, time passing.

I got it. I'd been there a while. Following the routine. Working. In a dream. Yeah,
working
. I rubbed my thumb and index finger together and shouted at him, “Pay?”

A look I hadn't seen from him yet: child-like innocence.

“Money?” I said.

A little shake of his head. Hands turned upwards, like, I'm hopelessly in the dark on this.

I grabbed him, locked my hands around his scrawny neck and shook him like a rag doll. “You overplayed that, you miserable old mongrel. Give me my baksheesh. Spondulicks.” I pushed him away. “Or else,” I said, drawing a finger across my own throat then pointing at him.

He looked at me darkly.

“Yes, you understood
that
, didn't you?” I said, and walked away.

Next morning, under my porridge bowl was an envelope with a bunch of twenty dollar notes in it.

I kept to the work routine. Truth is, I found it reassuring. Chopping wood, drawing water. One foot in front of the other. Out in the blazing sun each day. Feeling nothing much, but soothed by the ceaseless chugging of the Fordson, the orderly criss-crossing of the paddocks. Eating, sleeping. Not dreaming, not much. Dig, my head wasn't right still, obviously, and I knew that. But hey, there are worse things, no?

My memory returned bit by bit. The Moratorium. The blown deal with the Armed Rob boys. The whole Melbourne thing. But the Big One, the minotaur in the labyrinth, the heart of my darkness – whatever it was . . . That was still sleeping, out of reach.

I got in from work one night – it was hot, insects buzzing around. Not unpleasant, though. I sat down to eat and heard a voice say “Mel?”

Cathy. I looked around. No one there. Then the voice again, calling with the same questioning note.

Holy shit, it was Wuthering fucking Heights. I stood up, went out into the twilight. I could smell Cathy. Smell her hair, her skin, her cunt. And then I knew. Knew all of it.

VIOLET TOWN

We were driving back
towards
Melbourne, instead of north, where we'd figured the roadblocks would be. The whole gang crowded into my car. Going to meet Vic in Violet Town. My sense of impending catastrophe getting stronger with every mile.

Somewhere or other, I pulled off the road.

“Fuck it,” I said. “I'm not going any further.”

Stan leaned forward, put his hand gently on my shoulder. “Just be calm, mate. It's all right. This is the right thing. Get back to Melbourne.”

Jimmy said nothing.

Maybe Denise had something to say. I can't remember. She'd gone very quiet.

I sat there, staring straight ahead. Cathy was sitting next to me. She leaned over.

“You're speed crazy.” She gave my arm a shake. “Swap places. Give me the keys.”

Maybe I was psycho. Hell, I was, no doubt about it. I hadn't slept in a week. I was seeing twitchy, wobbly movements wherever I looked. Faces, eyeballs, cameras, hidden microphones. My vision was maybe thirty percent hallucinated. That's just an estimate. Possibly a conservative one.

Cathy gave my arm another shake. A moment of clarity. I had to go it alone from here.

But dig, it was
my
car, the same old light blue HD Holden station wagon I'd driven out of Sydney the previous year, the one that had spirited Stan away from Goulburn Jail, had shat itself on the Hume all that time ago, had been my Hammond–transporting workhorse this past eight months. Which my bank robber companions – especially Jimmy, who had become the unspoken leader of our doughty band – were convinced was their only means of escape.

I took the keys out of the ignition, removed my lucky tiki from the key ring, turned to Cathy and slapped the car keys into her mitt. Dug into my bag, gave one of the bricks of heroin to her. And got out of the car.

Upshotville: I was left standing by the side of the road, clutching a bag with a change of daks and underwear, a fat wad of money, a typewriter, a heavy load of number four white and my gun. On the outskirts of a town whose name I can't remember. There was a notional understanding that we would all meet up that night at an address in Frankston, Vic's bolthole. Where we would calmly and rationally plan a more orderly escape from Melbourne.