The Fine Color of Rust (10 page)

“Can you send copies of those photos to my office?” He's panting as we charge along the footpath.

“No problem, Mr. Deluglo.”

The emails we got from his staff before this visit requested a tour of local industry. We thought hard. The Social Security office is the obvious center of industry in this town. Most of us spend at least half a day a week in there trying to sort out missed payments or overpayments or underpayments or having a chat because it's the one place you know you'll find certain people on a Thursday morning. But that portfolio belongs to another minister.

Gabrielle from the Neighbourhood House Committee was eager to entertain the minister at her property, but we voted against letting him go to the big farms because they're the ones with money and he'd never believe how the rest of us live.

It was Norm who thought of Morelli's Meats.

“He can take a side of beef home for the barbie. And you've got to admit, they have a mighty presence in the town.”

It's true. The monthly tallow and glue melt on a day with a north wind is something visitors never forget.

Mario Morelli was thrilled to be selected to represent the town's industry.

“We'll give him the full tour! I'll make sure everyone's got clean smocks.” He patted Heck on the back. “I hope he comes on a butchery day. Youse people don't understand the skills Hector's got with a cleaver. He's a bloody artist.”

When the minister and I arrive back at his car the driver is sprawled in the passenger seat reading the newspaper.

“Do you know how to get to the next stop?” the minister asks him, and the driver puffs scorn out through his nose.

“My charioteer,” the minister says. “Honestly, you are a marvel, Nick. I don't . . .”

He's talking to no one because Nick's already in the driver's seat, fondling the steering wheel and gently revving the engine. Gunapan hasn't seen a car this shiny since my husband, Tony, did a runner in Delilah, the CRX.

The mayor's waiting for us outside Morelli's Meats. The pens in the slaughter yard are empty, so we're lucky. After he lost his first driving job in Halstead Tony did a stint here, which is how I know that slaughter day's the one to avoid. The staff turnover is very high, and we don't want the minister chatting to a trainee with a bolt gun.

Mario hurries out, pulling off his plastic apron and flinging it back to his son, who is hurrying behind. He wipes his hands on his trousers and steps up, arm outstretched, to the minister, who takes the hand and pumps.

“Mario Morelli, Morelli's Meats, Minister.”

“Looking forward to seeing your men at work, Mr. Morelli.”

Not to be left out, the mayor steps up. I sigh and drag out the empty Kodak, but luckily the cadet reporter from the
Shire Herald
is pulling up at the curb. He lifts a camera with a paparazzi-sized lens from a bag over his shoulder, and the minister's smile widens.

“Minister, could we have you shaking hands with Mario again? And the mayor?” the reporter says.

After they've finished the handshaking fiesta, Mario escorts us on the tour. The abattoir is white and clean—and empty. Mario hurries us through the killing room, the freezer filled with carcasses on hooks, the penning yard, the loading dock, and the staff room. When we reach a door we've already passed three times as we zigzagged through the building, Mario pauses, his hand on the knob.

“Minister, you are about to see art in motion. It's unusual to be doing this work at an abattoir, but when we found out what Hector could do, we couldn't let him go. So we run our own butcher shop as well as the abattoir.” He swings open the door, the minister steps inside, and applause breaks out.

Half the town is inside the room. They must have sneaked in the back during our tour. They're sitting in rows facing a stainless-steel cutting bench where Hector stands, cleaver in one hand, rib cage of the pink and white fatty carcass of an enormous cow being massaged by the other. I'd never realized how tiny Hector is. He gives off an air of being a big man, but now I see that two and a half Hectors would fit inside that cow.

Norm waves to me from the front row. Kyleen's sitting next to the headmaster at the back. The staff of the abattoir take up the middle row. They are wearing glaringly white
smocks and hats that remind me of shower caps, and their arms are folded to show off their tattoos to best advantage.

“Oh God,” the reporter moans with pleasure, “I've got a great headline for this:
Meat the Minister.
”

The minister and the mayor get the seats directly in front of the bench. I move to the side and stand beside Mario and the reporter, who's scribbling fast and giggling to himself.

“Heck, you ready?” Mario calls.

Hector cracks his knuckles and flexes his arms, reaches over, and flicks the switch to start the band saw at one end of the long bench. A selection of cleavers and knives hangs from hooks above him.

“We had this bench made up specially for Hector after he won the state championship,” Mario tells the reporter.

Hector steps away from the cutting bench, rolls his neck, and touches his toes twice. He moves back up to the bench and wrangles the monstrous carcass into his arms.

“Ready.”

Mario holds the stopwatch up for the audience to see. As he presses the button he shouts, “Go!”

In the next thirteen minutes and twenty-four seconds, Hector slices the carcass down the middle, leaps up on the bench and wrestles the legs off, hammers the meat with a mallet that he seems to have pulled out of his T-shirt, carves slabs of meat from every part of the carcass, zooms more sections through the band saw, and thrusts his arm up to the shoulder into parts of the cow that magically fall apart into cuts of meat. The air gets thick with minute particles of meat and bone and gristle, and all the while Hector's grunting and shouting.

“Round!” he calls as he flings a fan-shaped selection of rump cuts to the front of the bench. “Rib eye! Brisket!”

“Done!” he screams, dropping his knife on the bench and raising his hands into the air. We turn to Mario, who's staring at the stopwatch.

“Holy Jesus,” Mario whispers. “He's broken his own record.”

It takes ten minutes for the applause and cheering to die down. The abattoir blokes crowd around Hector, slapping him on the back and punching him and hugging him.

“It's not official because we didn't have an independent timekeeper,” Mario's telling the reporter, “but it shows you—Heck hasn't even reached his peak. We're going to take out the Australia-wide. Youse people don't understand the talent we've got in this town.”

“Mario, you've been hiding this bloke away!” the mayor says. “We could get him on TV.”

“He's got a big future. He's only nineteen.”

We all look at Heck. I would have picked him as thirty-five.

“Outdoor work,” Mario says, shaking his head.

The mayor keeps brushing at his robe. It's an odd mottled color. I reach over to pick a bone chip from his gold chain.

“Don't worry, that'll clean up. It was worth it to see Heck perform. He's a champion.”

“The minister?” I ask.

Out in the yard Norm's got hold of a wet cloth and he's wiping the minister down while Nick, the charioteer, leans against the car, watching.

“Bit of a dry clean and the suit'll be fine. There, that feels better, doesn't it?” Norm's talking all cheery, like he's pacifying a child. The minister stands with his arms out. He raises his face to Norm to have it wiped. I think he's regressed. We can't send him back to Melbourne like this.

“School's next!” I say. “Let's get cleaned up before the choir.”

The driver holds open the door while Norm and I help the minister into the car. Halfway to the school he snaps back to his old self, plugs himself into the mobile, and talks gobbledegook to someone about outcomes and competencies. When he pulls out the earplug he's got the concrete smile back, festooned with a morsel of raw steak glued to his upper lip.

“Fascinating. What an experience,” he says. “So next it's the school?”

This would be the denial stage.

“Maybe we'll freshen up first at the Neighbourhood House,” I suggest. We don't want him to go frightening the children.

“Good idea,” he replies cheerfully.

In the front of the car Nick swats a fly away from the windscreen.

THE HEADMASTER'S TAKEN
my signs off the school fence. I was happy with the misspelled one. It looked like one of the kids had made it. Now the schoolyard's back to its usual self. Waist-high cyclone wire fence, a few bedraggled trees, adventure equipment that stopped having adventures years ago. The education department seems to have forgotten the school already. Heat rises from the asphalt in the yard, and cicadas make attempts at calls that peter out after a few strokes like a chain saw that won't catch. I wonder if everyone arrived here before us, or if they've gone to the pub to celebrate Heck's record.

The door of the school opens and the grade-three teacher bounds down the steps and pitter-patters toward us, his hands waving and his little belly bouncing. I must remember to tell Helen I think he's gay.

“Minister, welcome to Gunapan Primary. We've prepared a tour for you, nothing too boring or too long. I understand you must see the same thing over and over again so we won't keep you, but we want you to know that you won't find a more dedicated staff or a better-run school than this. At the
end of the day, what you're getting here is value for money, Minister, value for money.”

The minister nods. He's still a little dazed, but back at the Neighbourhood House a brisk rub with a washcloth brought him back to reality. After I'd twisted the washcloth corner into a bud and cleaned out his ears he'd asked if he could go to the toilet.

“Yes, but hurry up, we haven't got all day,” I told him. “And don't forget to wash your hands.”

The Basic Ed kids were coming out of the Neighbourhood House classroom and two Down syndrome boys rushed into the toilet after the minister. I knew they'd be staring at him in that unnerving intent way they have, but I could hardly follow them into the men's toilet. Sure enough, after a few seconds I heard one boy shriek and giggle. Damien ran out of the toilet, his big flat feet slapping on the tiles and his hands flapping.

“The man farted!” he screamed, and laughed until he began to snort.

Tina, the Basic Ed teacher, came and stood beside me. She draped her arm around her giggling son, for whom the funniest thing in the world always has been, and always will be, farting. “Shut up, Damien. Who's in the toilet?” she asked.

“The Minister for Education, Elderly Care and Gaming,” I told her.

“Oh, ha ha. Come on, kids, let's go,” she called, and the boys tumbled off after her. A few seconds later the minister walked out.

“Ready, Mr. Degugulo?” I asked.

“Yes, thank you,” he answered in a high-pitched voice, and walked unsteadily to the car.

Now I'm following the grade-three teacher, who is ushering
the minister up the steps of the school and gabbling as if he's snorted speed.

“One hundred and twenty-three children, four teachers, and three teachers' aides, you can't complain about that for efficiency, Minister. Productivity up eleven percent in the last two years. All local children. We have a need, oh yes, we have a real need in the community. Where would they go, you ask? They'd have to go to a school forty kilometers away, a one-hour bus ride with all the pickups along the way, that's two hours' travel a day, into a school that already has seven hundred children. We run a sports program, oh no, you won't find an obesity problem in this school population . . .” He pauses, looks down, and pats his paunch. “Well, maybe the teachers could use a little work, but the children are fit and healthy and the grades they're getting, Minister, we're in the top twenty in the state for that even though . . .”

I drop back discreetly as he leads the minister into the headmaster's office, where the headmaster has appeared in a clean suit and spectacles, sitting behind his desk and shuffling papers.

“Where are you?” I ask Helen on the mobile. “I'm alone here with a traumatized member of parliament and a grade-three teacher who's taken mind-altering drugs. Did I tell you I think he's gay?”

“Figures. I'm on my way. We had an emergency at the surgery and I had to stay an extra half-hour while the doc fixed the guy up. Some idiot from the abattoir with a bone splinter in his eye.”

I'm standing on the school steps when she pulls up.

“What do you want me to do?” she asks.

“I don't know. We've had a couple of hiccups. Heck dismembered a cow and spattered the minister with gore.”

“Oh.”

“And Kyleen told him all about Norm stripping the copper wire from the old substation.”

“Oh.”

“That's probably OK. I think that's all wiped from his memory. But now what? I didn't think this through, Helen. A visit to the school isn't going to change his mind. Every school can trot out a choir.”

“I'm not so sure they all have a fire-eating team.”

“Oh, God. I thought that teacher ran off to learn the lute in Nimbin.”

“He left the gift of the grade-four circus club. They can all swallow fire. But I think it's only a demo with three girls today.”

I close my eyes. If I believed in a compassionate God I'd pray.
Please, Your Benevolence, don't let the minister catch fire.
I'm sure all that fat from the abattoir is flammable. I can see it now. We're on track to send the minister back emotionally shattered, smeared with blood and bone, and barbecued. Of course you can keep your school, they'll say. Gunapan's an example to us all.