‘Make it an accident,’ said Bob, ‘late one night at the marina — tap him between the shoulder blades with a forklift. Drop a cargo on top.’
Each competitor handed over five dollars.
‘The end of the month we all vote, an’ the winner gets the envelope,’ explained Stuart. ‘Got any ideas on you, Frank?’
He felt all eyes on him. He looked at the suggestions on Stuart’s notepad that included past games. The last winner, circled in red said, ‘Alex — contamination of water tank with crapping.’
‘Snake in the coin jar. Death adder.’
Stuart grimaced, impressed.
It would have been good to be at home with no one else there.
‘That’s nice, Frank — good to get back to the original form once in a while.’
A tall aboriginal man walked to the bar and everyone looked up. It was time to go, but Frank’s body felt sluggish, like it might not have anything to do with him any more. The man put an arm round Pokey’s shoulder and they shook hands. Stuart banged his glass on the table. It reverberated in Frank’s head, made his teeth clench.
‘Just what we don’t fuckin’ need,’ growled Stuart. Everyone ignored him apart from Linus, who laughed loudly, like he’d been told a joke. The man at the bar looked over, the white of one eye was bright red. He chewed something slowly and watched as Stuart stood up, holding his hands in fists by his sides. They looked at each other for a few long seconds but then Stuart sat down again and took a gulp from his beer. A hardness was getting into Frank’s back, had wound its way up behind his ears, and his arms twitched of their own accord. He wished Stuart would piss off. Frank drained his drink. He wanted another but if he stood up something bad would happen. The rest of the bar was looking and it made his face itch. The aboriginal went back to talking with Pokey. They both laughed and glanced at Stuart.
‘The good old days you wouldn’t get buggers like him in here,’ growled Stuart.
‘Go fuck yer’self, mate,’ said Linus.
‘Enough, fellas,’ said Bob, not loudly.
‘Well,’ said Stuart, shrugging his shoulders and offering his palms up like a man put in an impossible position. No one responded and he downed his drink. ‘Pretty soon this place’ll be more black than white — ’specially if bastards like him keep on mixing it up.’ He nodded towards Pokey. ‘You know that, Frank?’
Frank felt sweat beading up his face. He should go. He thought of Joyce Mackelly’s face, rubbed grey by a wet thumb, up in the tree branches. He could feel people looking at him, wondering.
Stuart carried on, ‘Fucker was bedded up with one of them. A full-blood as well, not even a bitch he could fuck white.’ There was a feeling like the place had been struck with a tuning fork, a ringing silence, then Linus made a low fast move towards Stuart, but before he reached him Frank had thrown his drink in Stuart’s face and slapped him across the cheek. Stuart fell off his chair and people all over the bar stood up. There was a low roar and Stuart came for Frank, his glass still in his hand. Frank’s fingers tingled from the contact with Stuart’s face, everything slowed down like a playback on the TV.
I’m going to get it in the face, he thought, just standing there, and I’ll welcome it. Then Pokey was behind Stuart and had him round the throat, and Stuart’s eyes bulged and his face was the purple of plums, green veins on his neck. He dropped the glass and Pokey dragged him to the wall with bear strength, held him up there with his forearm against his throat and shouted, ‘Now just you calm the fuck down!’ Pokey’s face was so close to Stuart’s that they could have kissed. ‘If I hear another squeak out of you that I don’t like that’s it. For good.’
He took his arm away and Stuart bent over, hacking, a hand up to his throat. Bob slapped Frank on the shoulder and spoke in a voice that was pointedly cheery, ‘Not to worry, mate, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last.’ Stuart limped out of the door, doubled over. ‘He’ll be embarrassed enough about this to pretend it never happened.’
Pokey and his friend sat back at the bar as if everything were normal; the man raised a glass at Frank and Frank looked away. He’d just wanted to hit someone.
It was late in the day and the chickens were keeping an eye on him. He went inside and grabbed up the peelings and apple cores from the sink, took them out and flung them to the chooks. They pelted to it like it was roast beef. It was a worry feeding them. He’d bought a bag of chook grit and thrown great fistfuls of the stuff out, but was that enough? He’d shown them where the water was, had set them out a couple of dishes, picked up each hen and wet its beak from the dish, but they just quailed against his shirt and kicked, so he let them go. He found himself hoping he would wake up and they would both be gone, their clipped wings healed, flown away. It was lonely being the person responsible for their well-being. The way they looked at him as he moved about the veranda sometimes made him afraid, how they waited until the last moment to get out of the way of car wheels and seldom looked up at any noise apart from the feed bag. He walked past them, on his way picking up the old brown machete Bob had brought round. He shook it at Mary, said ‘Ar-har’ like a pirate. Mary looked back beadily and made a noise like an old door opening.
Bob had given him the machete along with a rake and a rusted incinerator. ‘To be honest, mate, I pinched it from here a while back,’ he’d said, planting it in a friendly way in the dirt by his feet. The thing was old and had ugly carvings on the handle, like something you might get on a cheap greetings card, birds and beetles dancing in and out of vine leaves.
He chopped down an armful of cane, just to get the feel of it. He tore off the thrash, while Kirk and Mary bothered about his feet, picking up bits of leaf and spitting them out again. With a pocket knife he split a stalk down the middle and a line of juice ran out. On that last holiday, with his mum still there, he had sat out by the cane in a tin hip bath of cold water, wearing his undies and his dad’s straw hat. A stem of sugar cane dipped in the water had made a cool sweet cud that he’d filtered through his teeth and spat out, into the water and on to himself. That thick smell of filter mud from nearby farms, richer than molasses, crappy and sweet at the same time. His parents — his dad with his summertime moustache, his mum wearing lemons on her dress — had sat on the steps drinking beer and peeling prawns.
With a stalk protruding out of his mouth, he took his machete inside to oil up and clean off some of the rust. He’d set it aside on a piece of newspaper when he heard a motor and, looking out of the window, he saw it was Linus with an old brown kelpie panting in the back tray of his truck.
‘How’s it going?’ Frank asked.
The old man smiled. ‘Thought I might as well drop by for a drink.’
Did you, now, thought Frank. ‘Beer suit ya?’
‘She’ll do.’
Frank fetched a couple and took them out to where Linus had sat himself in the sun on the steps. He didn’t say thank you when Frank handed him the beer, but nodded as if to say well done.
‘Just wanted to drop by and make as well you were feeling good about Stuart.’
‘Yeah, sorry for causing a scene there,’ said Frank, reddening.
Linus shrugged. ‘Caused less of a scene than I was about to. Sometimes you wanna stab the idiot in the guts. He’s not such a bad bloke, though, not really. We go back a bit.’ Linus settled himself back on his elbows, face to the sun. ‘Wife left him a couple of years back — left him with the two kids. Snot-nosed little buggers they’ve turned out to be — not surprising, though. He was only a kid himself. Anyway, he likes to get het up — you could swap Stephanie for every bugger’s name he gets mad at. She’s had no contact with those kids, Stuart neither.’