They opened up their packets of food and there was a low level of talk, some smokes. Flood held up his tin. ‘What kind of an army marches on lima beans?’ When no one responded, he answered himself: ‘A pretty crook one, that’s what kind.’
The beans were like soft stones on Leon’s tongue. The heat glazed him, if anything happened he might just sit there and watch it all come. Now and then he thought he could smell eucalyptus in among the rubber trees, where birds drilled and carried on like there was nothing the matter. Cray ate his meal a little distance from the others, always watching.
Leon’s feet were swollen in his boots; he could feel a hot liquid between his toes. The back of Flood’s neck was livid orange and muddled with mosquito bites, and he could feel them at him too, piercing through his hat and collar, drinking through the repellant, different from the ones back home, something deeper in their whine. Some of the men shook out their clothes, unbuttoned their shirts looking for leeches. One man bit his lips into a thin line and tried to look only annoyed by the thick slug that had blown up bloodily on his chest. He poked at it with a lit cigarette and the thing fell off, a pat in the dust. They must be on me too, thought Leon. He checked down the cuffs of his sleeves, rolled up both trouser legs, but couldn’t find any. He decided not to look too much closer; the man, having stripped to his underwear, was now looking palely into his pants.
‘This is the fucking life, eh?’ said Cray, catching Leon’s eye.
‘My oath,’ said Leon and they both laughed, and it felt good.
Mail arrived in a chopper with a restock of lima beans. Flood shouted ‘Fuck!’ into an opened tin. Cray had a letter that made him stroke the stubble on his chin hard with his hand and walk away, looking up into the tops of the trees. There was a letter for Leon, another postcard that had been sealed in an envelope. The address on the back was the shop and there was a thin bit of tracing paper inside from Mrs Shannon: ‘All good here. Take care.’ The postcard was not of a beach and there was no smarmy cartoon character on the front. It was a black and white photograph, old — maybe forty years old — so that it was faded and difficult to tell what it was of. The most he could make out was that it was a picture of some gum trees, receding into darkness where the bush got thick.
One day you will come here and you will know how the fish swim at the surface of the water, so you can see them all the time, and how the big white cockatoos bunch in one tree and shriek the mornings in. These are the things that we see now, my love my love my love.
Leon folded the little picture in two.
‘You got some mail?’ asked Rod in a hopeful sort of a way. He hadn’t been able to keep the disappointment off his face when there’d been nothing for him. But Leon couldn’t help that.
‘Not really, mate. Just a bill.’ Rod nodded in a way that Leon could see he was hurt, so he took a picture of him and that made the kid smile again.
9
The bugger of it was that he didn’t even like the ugly things. Frank’d brushed past the little table that held the sugar figures to get at a hornet that had billowed in and he’d misjudged it so that his hip had cracked against the corner of the table. The bell jar leant over and fell on the floor, where it smashed.
‘Cunt!’ he’d bellowed at the hornet, who drifted out through the door in a leisurely fashion. The dim glints of glass splinters were everywhere. The figurine of his grandfather lay on its side, split from the hand of his bride. His grandmother still held on to the hand, which had broken below the cuff of his wedding jacket. Rubbing the ache in his hip, Frank tried to stand his grandfather up again, but the base of his feet had flaked away and there was no balance left. The sugar was grey on the cut. Where the colouring had faded he could make out thumbprints, which made him stand still for a moment. He picked up the models of his parents and saw the thumbprints there too. Now that he’d seen them he couldn’t throw them away, and he laid all four of them down on their backs. After a second’s thought he gingerly high-stepped over to the sink and found a dry J-cloth, which he covered them over with, before putting on his boots and sweeping up the glass with a newspaper.
On the way to work Frank drove past the Blue Wren coffee shop. There was a fat, egg-like woman sweeping out the front. He imagined Joyce Mackelly in black and white, her thumb stuck out to the small traffic. Imagined her picture swept away by the breeze of his truck’s wheels as he passed by, knocking up a dust.
They spent the day loading disposable lighters and telegraph poles, and Frank’s palms became dry and calloused from pushing at the poles and landing them in the right place. The thick gloves he wore made his hands sweat like buggery. It was a long job, because half of the usual ship’s crew were off and the stand-in hatch man just said ‘whateveryareckon’ when anyone asked for his help.
Afterwards they arranged themselves in the pub, dried out and leathered from the sun, and Stuart talked loudly about trapping foxes, while everyone nodded gravely. Frank felt a fug behind his eyes that would turn into a headache. Pokey sat at the bar alone, his eyes on the television showing a documentary about female jockeys. Frank watched out of the corner of his eye until there was only a thumb’s depth left in the glass, before getting up and ordering one for both of them. Pokey nodded once in his direction, slid his empty across to him and took hold of the new glass. His attention went straight back to the television. Frank cleared his throat and smiled, but Pokey didn’t look at him and Frank went back to his seat. ‘He’s heaps,’ he said to Bob and Bob rocked back in his chair.
‘Yeah, he’s a real funny man. Gruff as two bulldogs fucking.’ He leant forward again, talking quietly. ‘That’s how come we plan to murder the bastard.’
‘Huh,’ said Frank, not sure where this was going.
Stuart rubbed his hands together and produced a notepad. ‘Righto,’ he said. ‘It’s that time again, folks.’ He put on a crappy American accent that set Frank’s teeth on edge. ‘It’s Pokey Lotto time, come on down.’
‘What’s this?’ asked Frank, looking behind him at Pokey, who was easily in hearing distance. He watched him take a long slurp of his drink then set it down quietly, the skin of his face glowing blue from the television screen.
‘This is a long-kept tradition, Franko,’ said Stuart, a smile that Frank did not like hardening up his face. ‘See, why do you think we call Pokey Pokey?’
Frank shrugged. ‘His second name’s Poke?’
‘Because he keeps a bar-room fruit machine in his kitchen. That’s right. He uses it like a giant money box — keeps a jar of dollars in the fridge and puts ’em in, all his wages pretty much, they’re all in there.’
Linus joined in. ‘Few blokes tried to take that machine one night. Pokey got at ’em with a harpoon — right in the arse!’
Whether or not this was true, it seemed to tickle Linus so much that his laughter turned into a coughing fit and he grinned, tears of choke reddening his eyes.
‘So,’ Stuart continued, ‘what Pokey Lotto is, is a kind of syndicate. Each bloke thinks up a bit of a plot, right? A sort of robbery, murder-type scenario, about how to get to the money.’
‘Except,’ Bob came in, ‘the idea of the money seems to have flown out the window.’ He raised his eyebrows at Frank. ‘Now, we just plot the best way to murder the bugger!’ They all laughed including Frank, who felt his jaw ache from the strain of it.
‘I resent that, Bob,’ said Stuart.
‘An’ I do too,’ said Linus. ‘Now. Screwdriver in the eye — fastest way to the brain — won’t know what fucker’s on him.’ Linus passed five dollars to Stuart who folded it carefully and put it in the envelope before writing down on his pad, ‘Linus — Screwdriver in eye.’