The Big Whatever (22 page)

I played my part, showing up on time, strumming rhythm, pocketing a few quid, then fucking off again. None of them asked me anything about myself, which was a relief. To them I was simply ‘Mal Parsons.'

On it went like that for three months. Dances, weddings, clubs, bachelor and spinster balls, whatever came up. In time I got used to their eccentricities. The young bass player, Kev, wasn't
all
bad, and seemed maybe a tiny bit open to new ideas. We killed some downtime one weekend
by working out a couple of intros and outros. That worked okay, so we moved on to hooks and fills.

Over time I taught them all how to bring in a song with a proper double count, instead of the Rafferty's rules, Brown's cows ‘Here we go, boys' that Doris favoured. The drummer was beyond teaching, but he could play half a dozen feels without fucking up the tempo too royally. Kev's time sense was okay so I suggested he take over the drums for a few numbers, which allowed the drummer to go and prop up the bar, which suited him better anyway. I put young Elaine on the bass – she wasn't great, but if she kept it simple, she could do her bit.

Doris was wary, inclined to do things the way she always had, but I persuaded her to give over the middle set to the new routine, and it got a result, so she went along.

Dougie the steel player – one of the most silent men I'd ever met – turned out to have a good ear. Played old-style country with a swing inflection. He sang an exact quarter semitone flat, which on the right songs – anything by Hank or Lefty – sounded fantastic.

As far as I could tell, Dougie hadn't been in a big city for decades, but somehow he'd heard the Flying Burrito Brothers. So we worked up a blackfella hillbilly version of ‘Sin City.' I persuaded Doris to let Dougie have a guest spot, and his ‘heart songs' soon became an indispensable part of the show. I don't know what the yokels made of gold-plated doors and the Lord's burnin' rain, but it sure blew
my
mind.

Bit by bit, the combo cleaned up its act, shined its shoes and winked at the world. After a couple of months it had turned into something else.

Dig, my young cosmopolites, it was still squaresville, but that bit of smartening up made all the difference. We started getting more people onto the dancefloor, then we found we were being asked back, and can you make it soon. All because of yours truly.

And I got something back for it. Dig, all my life music had been
the
thing. My grail. The sacred invisible shape after which I had quested. My own kabbalah. Music, there and not there. Ethereal waveforms, imaginary structures, vibrations in the air, tricks played in our heads and in our ears and with our hands. Bits of string and wood and tin and animal skin hit, plucked, stroked or rubbed a certain way, and fucking bingo, you've conjured up something more real than bricks and mortar. It's magic, baby, and your humble correspondent Mel was and is a fully initiated, thirty-third degree member of its priesthood. We didn't give a shit if the squareheads thought us drunks and wasters. We
knew
, baby. We had the knowledge. Fucking shamans, man.

I didn't mind playing those square venues. You hit the rhythm, however unhip, and watch the dancers take to the floor. They shuffle around a bit, but then the music gets into them and they move in a different way. And they can't help but smile. So you in turn play that bit closer to the beat, and they feel that too, and we're all moving closer to something. The holy ghost, baby.

Then it's over. They go home, pissed as newts, so next day they can't even remember that the night before they were fucking well waltzing with the angels. Dig what Mel ‘Master of Rhythm' Parker is putting down here, my young boppers: such is the lot of the jobbing musician. Wasn't news to me, I'd been through that my whole life. Pearls before swine and so on. Not swine exactly. You know what I mean.

Doris was grateful for what I'd done for her band. She didn't try to hide it. I mean, she was well advanced in years, but many a good tune et cetera. Not that I was that interested or anything. But I did my bit. She had a hubby in the wings who tagged along some of the time. Jacko had a long lean face, thick tufty hair. A man of few words, but a canny old codger, I guessed.

Doris and Jacko were old-school tent show people. I knew their type. Bush-bashing year in, year out. Could turn
their hands to any number of stunts: sing and strum, trick ride a horse, juggle, tumble, deliver a humorous recitation. Run a take-all-comers boxing troupe. Whatever was called for. Doris had been something of a dish back in the old days, I gathered, had looked good in a skimpy bathing suit. In their heyday they'd been top of the travelling show racket. They had a house up on the Gold Coast, which they got to once a year. Mostly they preferred to drag a caravan around.

I need to tell you about this Jacko fellow. Indeterminate age, but he'd been a showie since before the war. Had a rolled ciggy permanently on his lip, which he could fire up by force of will alone. He wore a little pork pie at that particular jaunty angle favoured by people whose business concerns horses. Actually, he did have a sideline – a small livestock transport company, whose business was based mostly out west. He sipped scotch with ginger ale from a small tumbler, starting after lunch, going into the night, every night, but never got sloppy that I saw. Until eight o'clock every night he was on top, after that the best he could manage was a friendly grin.

He spoke quietly and not too much, never looked at people or things too directly, he would take it all in with a quick sideways glance. People we met around the place seemed to like and respect him, but there was something under the surface, too. I noticed that people kept a certain distance.

He busied himself with the trucking business, and I guessed he was doing bush stuff as well, a little real estate and livestock trading. Jacko was altogether too shrewd, and I did my best to keep clear of him.

Not clear enough. One autumn morning, after I'd been with the outfit six months or so, I found myself sharing tea and toast with him in a milk bar in a far west town. We'd driven there, just the two of us – he'd specifically asked me to give him a lift to a wedding job we were booked for.

As we sipped our tea, Jacko started dilating on the different kinds of tent show he'd been involved with over the
years. Then out of the blue he said, “We don't pry, you know that, eh?”

I looked at him.

“Our sort of people. Showies. No names, no pack drill. That's our thing.” He liked to use those terms: “your thing,” “no hang-ups,” “a rip-off.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.
Mal
.” Saying my bodgey name like he was picking it up with tweezers.

I took a sip of tea. My hand was trembling.

“Jeez, we've had a few odd bods with us over the years.” He shook his head, smiling. “But where they're from and what they've done, the way I see it, that's their business.”

“Yeah?”

“So long as they don't bring their shit with them.”

“That's the best way,” I said.

“But it's part of my job to look out for trouble, too. Head it off.”

Dig, people, Jacko's tone was gentle, friendly – the kindly old uncle. A little hypnotic even. Like a snake.

“Of course,” I said.

“Doris says I'm just a bloody old stickybeak.”

“Yeah?”

“But I like meeting people. Especially people who are a little bit different.”

Pause. “Like you.”

“I'm different?”

“Yeah, you are. In lots of ways. And I mean
apart
from you being on the gear. And to be honest it made me curious—” He allowed another meaning-laden pause, then smiled, looked at me directly and said, “Mel.” With half a question there, still looking at me.

I looked back at him. Man, there was cold steel in those glims.

“It is Mel, isn't it?”

How could he know?

“What makes you say that?” I said.

But I'd waited too long to answer him, and he smiled at me, unable to hide the hint of triumph.

“See, mate, I was sure I knew you from somewhere. Then it hit me. Years ago. You were strumming a guitar. You probably don't remember me.” He smiled again, looked away. “Gee, they were great days, weren't they, before the idiot box came and fucked us all.”

I looked at him closely. No recollection. But dig, you hip and in-the-know readers, when my detractors in the yellow press had referred to me as a one-time singing cowboy, there'd been a grain of truth in it. I'd played the tent shows, spent many a long day and night on the road, following them dusty old fairgrounds a-calling, and what have you. Long time ago. When I was still a kid.

But Jacko had picked me. Which meant the wily old bastard knew the story. Knew all about the infamous Mel Parker. Knew I hadn't died at Violet Town.

I did some quick reckoning: maybe he'd observed that I didn't give a shit about anything much, was indifferent to the money. That I was supposed to be dead but wasn't. After a series of bank robberies. The best possible conclusion: he'd figured I was lying low, holding folding. And plenty of it. Only reason he could have for bringing it up. He was putting the hard word on me.

I had only one card to play.

“If you want to ask me something, go ahead – ask,” I said.

FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN

He looked at me now, his smile gone. Waiting for me to make my move. All right Jacko, here we go.

“But I know what you're up to, you thieving cunt, so keep that in mind.”

He kept looking at me.

“Sheep and cattle duffing, right? How many head a year you moving, Jacko? Fucking plenty, I'll bet. Using your trucks. You want to talk about that too?”

Dig, this was fifty percent guesswork, but it stacked up: the closed meetings with dodgy characters, the fleet of trucks. I'd picked up bits and pieces of news, too – thousands of heads of livestock being stolen from properties out west, some of which were bigger than European principalities, their stock spread out over hundreds of square miles. A poor cocky wouldn't know until days or weeks later, by which time his stock had been sold, maybe more than once.

Jacko held the look for another second or two, then laughed, shook his head and patted my arm in a friendly way. He stood up and said, “Fuck me, I'm worse than an old sheila, eh? No offence meant. I overstepped the mark a little bit there, and I'd be grateful if you put it out of your mind,” and went and paid for our tea. He came back, “Well, we better go and see about getting this happy couple properly hitched, eh?” And that was that.

My mind was racing the whole time I played the reception that night. Jacko was running his thieving trade very smoothly, thank you. He had more than a few rough types on the payroll. And he must have had someone in authority onside. A copper, maybe a team of bush coppers. Yeah, there had to be an entire network – otherwise it couldn't be happening on such a scale. We were in New South Wales at the time, but Jacko's business seemed equally at home in Victoria, Queensland, even South Australia. Which meant he'd probably have heavies and crooked cop mates throughout the four states. Fuck me, the guy could be the Little Caesar of the western boondocks.

When the gig finished, I got in my car and drove away – and kept driving. When I became too tired to go on, I pulled into an abandoned quarry, slept in the car. I woke after three or four hours and drove again for another couple of hours. Pulled into some dump of a town and ordered breakfast in
a café. The old lady serving me smiled and said, “Oh hullo. You're with Doris's group, aren't you? I saw you at the ball last month. What are doing all the way over here?”

I looked at her open-mouthed, mumbled something. I'd forgotten: out here you can drive a hundred, two hundred miles to the next big town and it's like you've strolled across Oxford Street from Darlo to Surry Hills. They're half a day of high-speed driving apart, but they're neighbours. And don't forget the bush telegraph, so fast that people in those two towns could be a couple of old chooks magging over the back fence.

I finished my breakfast and started driving again. I backtracked for an hour, then took a side road and headed east. This time I kept driving. Out of the district. Slept in the car, drove the next day, halfway across the state.

I drove and drove. Wound up on the coast, which I'd been avoiding in my travels so far. I booked into a scabby motel, pulled the blinds. I set my bag on the bed and went through my possessions, putting everything in neat piles. Some sort of neurotic jag, I guess. My changes of clothes. My music stuff. My big bad brick of heroin. My drug paraphernalia. My gun. My bundle of money. My typewriter.

What had I been thinking? How many people knew me now, and how many of them knew who I really was? Had word got back to Melbourne? Christ, to
Sydney
? Oh children, I'd let my shit get mucho untogether.

I threw the
I Ching
. Came up with:
Fire on the mountain. The Wanderer. Success through smallness. Perseverance brings good fortune to the wanderer
.