The Turning (24 page)

Vic was silent at the mention of his father. He plunged his hands into the suds and washed.

Bob was everything Ernie wasn’t, said Carol. But you could never tell their mother this. Bob cleaned up every mess his brother made. And when he needed help he got nothing. Just this howl
of disappointment, disapproval.

I’ve heard some stories, I said, hoping to head Carol off somewhat. Vic was clenching his jaw now.

Ernie and Cleo were off again – on again. They were like a bad movie. She ran away to Kalgoorlie once. Took the kids and all. Bob gets dragooned into driving Ernie up there to save their
marriage. It’s his mother’s idea; in fact, she comes along. They drive all day, seven hours to Kal and get there on sunset. Mrs Lang words Ernie up and sends him in, and Bob and her sit
in the car for two hours.

While Ernie and Cleo were hashing it out? I asked.

Well, that wasn’t what they were doing.

Mum—

Bob and his mother sat out in the car while Cleo and Ernie had an amorous two hours, punctuated by the usual barney – which meant they were off again – and then the three musketeers
drove home all night so Bob could make the morning shift.

I was laughing again. I couldn’t resist it.

Vic, she said, is his father’s son.

Thanks, Mum.

And neither of us, Gail, is his grandmother.

Family, said Vic. It’s not a word, it’s a sentence.

Rubbish, said Carol. It’s an adventure.

Don’t give her any more to drink, said Vic.

But I did. I took her by the arm and we sat out under the grapevines where our clothes and hair dried awry and the sunset made the sky all Christmassy and we talked and laughed until we forgot
the man between us and made some headway.

T
HE DAY AFTER HER DIAGNOSIS
Mum sent me in search of the old man. She’d lain awake all night thinking and she told me she just wanted to see him
again before she died. Although it was five in the morning she knew I’d be awake. I couldn’t believe what she was asking me to do – it was such a longshot, so unlikely that it
felt cruel – but in the circumstances I had neither the heart nor the presence of mind to turn her down. I got out a map of Western Australia and studied it over a breakfast I had to force
down with several coffees. I left messages at the office, kissed my sleepy wife goodbye and drove out of the city with the rising sun in my eyes.

Almost twenty-seven years had passed since I’d seen my father. I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. The only piece of information Mum had armed me with was the name of a
bush pub in the eastern goldfields. It was there on the map, Sam’s Patch. The pub seemed to
be
the town. It was the last known address. As I drove I held the folded map to my face a
moment and smelled the classrooms of my childhood.

I was too tired to be driving such distances that day but I fought to stay alert. At the outskirts of the city, the foothills and the forests still bore signs of the week’s
drought-breaking storms. Road crews were out and men took chainsaws to fallen trees. A couple of hours east, machines were seeding wheat paddocks. Water lay in culverts at the roadside and birds
gathered to wash themselves, hardly stirring as I passed. I drove until farms gave way to red earth and salmon gums, until the sun was behind me and the towns were mostly ruins amidst the slag
heaps of mines long abandoned. Even out here, in staticky waves, the radio spewed scandal from the police royal commission.

Up past Kalgoorlie I turned off the highway onto a thin bitumen road which wound between old mineheads and diggings until it petered out amongst the remains of a ghost town. All that was left
was the Sam’s Patch pub and before I reached it I pulled over and switched off the engine to think a minute. The hours on the road hadn’t given me any ideas about what to say or how to
act. I’d concentrated so hard on staying awake that I was nearly numb and I sat there with the motor ticking and the window wound down long enough to feel queasy again at the thought of what
I’d agreed to do. If this was it, if the old man was really in there, what sort of state would he be in after all this time? I tried to think in purely practical terms; I couldn’t
afford to feel much now. I had to consider the logistical details of managing him, of cajoling and threatening and maintaining him for the time it took to deliver him as promised. The feelings
I’d deal with later. But I dreaded it. God, how I dreaded it. He’d never been violent; I wasn’t afraid in that sense. It was the fear of going back to how things were. Drunks and
junkies take everything out of you, all your patience, all your time and will. You soften and obscure and compensate and endure until they’ve eaten you alive and afterwards, when you think
you’re finally free of it for good, it’s hard not to be angry at the prospect of dealing with the squalor again. There was no point in being furious at my mother for needing this, but I
couldn’t help myself.

I drove up and pulled in to the blue-metal apron in front of the pub. It was a fine old building with stone walls and brick quoins and wide verandahs, stained with red dust
and hung with barrows and wagon wheels and paraphernalia of the goldrushes. When I got out and stood stiff in the sunshine a blue heeler stirred on the steps and behind it, in the shadows of the
verandah, an old man put his hat on but did not rise from where he sat. I licked my lips, summoned what I could of my professional self, and strode over.

Before the dog reached me I could see that the man was not my father. His low growl turned the heeler in its tracks. I stumped up onto the verandah almost faint with relief.

I’m looking for Bob Lang, I said without preamble.

And who would you be, then? asked the old bloke. He had the ruined nose and watery eyes of a dedicated drinker. His hat was a tattered relic of the last world war.

I’m his son.

Honest Bob. And you’re the son.

You know where he is?

The old cove nodded, his lips pursed. In the top pocket of his overalls was a spectacles case which he fished out in order to survey me.

Must look more like yer mother, he muttered.

I shrugged. I felt awkward standing there in my pressed jeans and pullover. The old fella considered my brogues with interest.

You in strife?

No, I answered.

He’s a good bloke is Bob.

I nodded at this to humour the old bugger and because I knew it to be true, but acknowledging it was painful.

The old bloke hauled himself up with a scrape of boots on the boards and opened the screen door. As he went in he flung the door back for my benefit and I followed him into a hall-like room that
seemed to be emporium, public bar and community hall.

This your pub? I said taking it in.

Nup. Live out the back. Thommo’s day orf.

At the bar he took up a blank pad and the stub of a pencil whose lead he licked before drawing me a map and a route out to a destination he labelled
BOB’S CAMP
.

Bob the Banker, he said tearing the page off and passing it to me. There he is.

And this is us here?

That’s us.

I straightened up and looked at the rows of bottles behind the bar. It occurred to me that it might be useful to arrive with supplies. I felt the bloke watching me and I don’t know whether
it was his undisguised interest or the bitterness I felt at having even to contemplate such a thing after all my mother had been through, but I decided against taking any booze, and so great was my
relief at the decision that as I folded up his helpful scrap of paper I thought I saw a flicker of respect in the other man’s gaze, the afterglow of which lasted all the way to the car.

I drove on up the thin black road awhile until I found the dirt turnoff indicated by the pencil map. The track was broad but muddy from the recent rains and when I turned into
it the car felt sluggish and skittish by turns. I really had to concentrate to keep from sliding off into the scrub. Out here the earth was red, almost purple. Set against it, the flesh-coloured
eucalypts and the grey-blue saltbush seemed so high-keyed they looked artificial. I had expected a desert vista, something rocky and open with distant horizons, but this woodland, with its quartzy
mullock heaps and small trees, was almost claustrophobic. Mud clapped against the chassis and wheel arches. When I hit puddles, great red sheets of water sluiced the windscreen. Wrestling the
wheel, I drove for half an hour until I came to a junction marked with a doorless fridge. It corresponded to my pencil map; I turned north. Five minutes later I turned off onto a slippery, rutted
track that ended in a four-way fork. After some hesitation I took the most northerly trail and drove slowly through old diggings and the pale blocks of fallen walls. The car wallowed through
shimmering puddles and the track narrowed until saltbush glissed against the doors.

I’d begun to sweat and curse and look for some way of turning back when I saw the dull tin roof and the rusted stub of a windmill amongst the salmon gums. A dog began to bark. I eased into
the clearing where a jumble of makeshift buildings and car bodies was scattered, and the moment I saw the man striding from the trees beyond, I knew it was him. I stalled the car and did not start
it again. I was dimly aware of the dog crashing against the door, pressing itself across the glass at my shoulder. It really was the old man. He was taller than I remembered and I was startled by
the way he carried himself, the unexpected dignity of him. All my manly determination deserted me. I uttered a shameful little o! of surprise. It was all I could do to unstrap myself and lurch out
of the vehicle so as not to be sitting when he arrived. The dog clambered at my legs, but at the old man’s piercing whistle it desisted and ran to his side. For fear of looking fastidious I
refrained from brushing the muddy pawprints from my jumper and jeans. I sat on the speckled hood of the car, folding and unfolding my arms. He came on through the waist-high saltbush, and when he
reached me and the red dog sat as instructed, I saw that he was sober. I saw the wattles of his neck, the sun-lesions on his arms, the black filaments of work in his hands and the braces that held
up his pants. He wore an ancient jungle hat, a faded work shirt and steel-capped boots more scarred than his long, melancholy face. His eyes were startled but clear.

Is it your mother?

Yes, I said.

What do you need?

She wants to see you.

He looked past me then and took a long breath. The dog whined and watched him.

You better come in. If you want to.

Will you come? I asked, angry at how sick with love I was at the very sight of him.

Of course, he murmured. If she asked.

She asked.

I have to . . . I need to organize myself.

How long will it take?

I have to think.

It’s a long drive.

You’ll need a cup of tea.

He turned toward the dwelling and I followed him. By the time I reached the cement slab of his verandah my brogues were ruined. He directed me to an armchair beneath the sagging tin roof where I
kicked off the shoes. I felt strangely short of breath and when I followed him indoors I was unprepared for how strongly the shack smelled of him. It was not an unpleasant odour, that mix of
shaving soap, leathery skin and sweat, but the sudden familiarity of it overwhelmed me. It was the scent of a lost time, how my father smelled before the funk of antacids and the peppermints that
never quite hid the stink of booze. I nearly fell into the wooden chair he pulled out for me. While he stoked up the old Metters stove and set the blackened kettle on it I tried to compose
myself.

The shack was a one-room bushpole construction with a corrugated iron roof and walls. In three walls were mismatched timber windows whose panes were scrubbed clean. At one end stood an iron bed
and a rough bookshelf and at the other was the wood stove set back in its tin fireplace. Between them where I sat was a deal table and two chairs. Black billies and pots hung from a wall. A steel
sink was set into a jarrah frame. The hand-poured cement floor was swept. There were photographs of my mother and me above the bed and one of him in uniform. I felt him watch as I took them in.
Myself at fourteen, all teeth and hair and hope. And my mother in her thirties, smiling and confident.

And Kerry? I asked despite myself.

The old man pointed back to the doorway where, above the lintel, a faded shot of my dead sister hung like an icon. A chubby toddler in a red jumpsuit.

How long have you lived like this?

Sober? he said, misunderstanding me. Fifteen years.

Fifteen years, I said.

He clamped his jaw and looked down but there was an involuntary pride in his posture as I repeated his words.

I have to see to things. Before I go.

Okay.

It’s too dangerous driving back in the dark, he said. There’ll be roos all over the road. Can you wait till morning?

I had hoped to head back today, I said, realizing as I did so that if we left now we wouldn’t reach the city until the early hours. After last night Mum would be in no fit state and the
drive was probably beyond me.

You’re welcome to stay here. But there’s rooms back at the pub if you’d rather not.

I’ll stay, I said after something of a pause.

The kettle boiled. He made tea and cut up some damper. We sat a while blowing steam – he from his tin mug and me from the china cup he’d given me. I tried the damper with the butter
he brought in from the kero fridge and it was good.

You coming like this, he said. It’s . . .

It’s sudden, I said.

He nodded sadly as though that was not what he’d been about to say.

How do you live? I asked.

Don’t need much out here. Get the pension. I look after things, hold things for people.

Bob the Banker, I said trying not to sound ironic.

Yeah.

What things?

Oh, money. Gold. Valuables.

What people?

There’s a few blokes here and there still prospecting. Some of them just pretending these days. Often as not just drinking or going off their rockers and lying low. Old sandalwooders,
fettlers, some strays and runaways. Don’t trust each other. Don’t trust emselves anymore. So they leave stuff with me.