"WHIM" another novelette by WESTERN AUSTRALIA'S TIM WINTON!
(Western Australia may be the most boring place in the world, but we're right proud of having spawned the most overrated writer in Christendom ... )
CHAPTER 1
i
I was only 19 when I got drafted.
I'm not a nostalgic bloke but I remember my old man didn't say a single word. It was a 7000 mile drive from Bundenin to Darwin in the south.
The car was hot and my arse ached in a dull way. Like I said, I'm not a nostalgic bloke, not much of a talker as a rule.
I've been almost totally silent throughout three failed marriages. I'm not shy. I just can't be bothered talking. Usually I just bore people shitless. That's okay.
Occasionally my silence is threatening. So the bloke next to me in the pub, or on the jetty, says to me, "let's go". And we punch each other in the head, repeatedly, in the desolate twilight of Western Australia's coast. Afterwards we're bleeding and joyous and mates.
That's how I roll.
ii
When Darwin appeared it was hot and blue. I got out of the ute. Young and straight and cocky in my new uniform. I felt good as gold. There were girls watching me on Darwin's big wide road.
"Strewth." The closest the old man ever came to swearing.
"Bye Dad." I said.
My father drove off with his strange dignity that always gave me the shits.
My mate from Bundedin, Big Mick, was there already. Mick was always there already. He laughed his laugh.
There's still a lot of people around who remember Big Mick, because there was something about him hard to get at, hard to describe, so I won't describe it or him.
"Time for your first legal beer, Jonah," he laughed.
The pub was called the CY O'Connor Arms, where I had my first coldie.
Big Mick laughed in his way and the girls outside shone up to him, dollied up in their minis and heels. He picked the one with bare feet and jeans. He picked her, and she knew she'd been picked.
I sipped at my beer and saw that Mick had somehow vanished as quickly as he'd appeared, like he always did, and always had done.
"Shit," I almost said. But before I could, a bunch of blokes were saying it for me.
"Shit! You 23rd Shithouse Company, mate?"
I hesitated. I was with 23rd Shithouse Company, but I didn't know these blokes.
"Carn, come the fuck over here, ya cunt!"
Then I got up eagerly. Like a bloody fool I loved these new mates already, and knew I always would.
It already felt wise and hard and right to be a fool.
iii
Sando and String were best mates from way back, with beige hair and twinkling blue eyes. I guess these days, if you saw them in a park, you'd think maybe they were both child molesters. Things were different back then.
We got drunk on the cold beer that does no harm to anyone, and talked as boys will.
Shit, I was only 18, Chook was 18, String and Sando were maybe 18.
Frog was 19, and took it all in quietly, with his quick older eyes that missed nothing and noticed anything.
Big Mick was 18 but could've been any age, and who cared anyway, how old he was, because he was behind a lantana bush with a barefoot girl, whistling and laughing and doing bird calls.
When the night's beauty seemed to peak, there was a savage scream, strange to my ears.
I wondered what it would be like, to be Big Mick.
Chook was in the dunny, String and Sando were playing two up, and Frog had grabbed the didj off some black fella.
He played it with intense privacy.
Chook was still in the dunny.
Outside I caught a shy movement, a glimpse of legs and slowly, gorgeously, the lantana bush revealed Big Mick's bare-footed girl. She put on thongs.
I wondered what it would be like, to be like Big Mick.
iv
The next day was more tough and real. But I was still proud like a fool, and even now I say I was foolishly wise in the hard way that knows. Like my long young feet and toes knew how to feel inside my new badass combat boots. I was gonna get some life. A taste of life. Bring it on.
Sarge Klipp was stony-faced, tanned, blond, and tough.
He spared us all bullshit and just eyeballed us for a good long hard thirty minutes.
"He's orright," muttered String as we stood completely still, allowing this calm strange man to stare at us.
We didn't know yet that Sarge was the kind of tough that always did it tough when the tough got going and the going got so tough that it was fucking tough enough.
Sarge had an ocean deep sorrow, a thing of his own, which he cherished and nursed.
None of us would ever find out what this strange silent man meant or what he dreamed of when he howled in the night.
CHAPTER 2
IN THE SHIT
i
Sometimes I wondered just what the hell we were doing there.
One day in Vietnam, we're in a forrest and Sarge wants us to check out this big brown hole in the middle of a whole lotta green shit, trees and leaves and grass.
It was a swamp, maybe.
It stretched and shuddered and swallowed Mick, Chook, Frog and all the other bastards.
I don't like nostalgia so I started to leave immediately but then I heard a noise.
Big Mick was spewed up like a hermit crab from this black hole in the universe.
ii
Big Mick made it back to Sydney but his legs stayed in Nam.
I was talking less than ever. But something new was happening down the Cross.
Disco - and for me, every night was Saturday night.
Bitterly, Big Mick rolled in after me in his wheelchair. It was like he was daring you to punch him. I thought one night he'd maybe go crazy. Or at least go home.
One night I met her. Dirty blonde hair, big brown eyes, two arms, two legs, an arse.
"Angel", her name was. My problem princess. Anything she wanted, she got, unless it was inappropriate.
I dealt pot and a small quantities of illegal abalone and lean roo meat, but nothing uncool. Angel designed wetsuits and knitted beanies. She spun the wool herself from a spinning wheel. Big Mick provided the fleece for the beanies.
The thing is, I needed beautiful people.
Soon Angel wasnt beautiful enough anymore. I looked at her arse one morning and wondered.
Something was missing - people, and life and love.
I kicked Angel's arse, hard, and looked at myself in the mirror.
I looked goddamn good.
I needed a way to prove my love for Angel. She thought love meant I had to do gay shit. Like talking. She even wanted me to do things. I would've done anything for her, if I'd wanted to.
Strewth. Shit.
I had to figure out how to show my love for Angel and Big Mick without words, actions, thoughts or feelings.
"Stuff to line up babe," I said. The punters wanted more abalone, more wetsuits, more fleece and a shitload more cannabis.
Tough gig, but by lunchtime I'd done it.
But when I got home to my brothel, Angel was crying. She was packed to go to the bus station. I had yet another wave of insight and barely-credible feeling.
I said, "There's nothing happening at the bus station that can't be happening here."
My Angel was pregnant.
I gave up disco, coffee, cigarettes and coke.
And then one hot day in the morning, Angel died tragically and totally unexpectedly of a heroin overdose, shortly after talking back to me.
CHAPTER THREE
My mate Spandy took over business and I sank back into the beanbag for a well deserved rest.
My kids were born soon after. They were cards.
They would've said I was the best Dad ever, if they hadn't been taken out of my care because I was too subversive.
The 80s were nearly done.
Spandy had to chop me hand off though. He was fighting with Diff, our smack connection, to defend me honor. I irresponsibly got between them, accidentally grabbing Diff's dick and nads. So I lost me hand.
I got into bed with a bottle of cheap port and my didj for good.
I listen now to Western Australia's Indian Ocean crying for me and for the whole bloody wonder and strangeness of life.
(Western Australia may be the most boring place in the world, but we're right proud of having spawned the most overrated writer in Christendom ... )
CHAPTER 1
i
I was only 19 when I got drafted.
I'm not a nostalgic bloke but I remember my old man didn't say a single word. It was a 7000 mile drive from Bundenin to Darwin in the south.
The car was hot and my arse ached in a dull way. Like I said, I'm not a nostalgic bloke, not much of a talker as a rule.
I've been almost totally silent throughout three failed marriages. I'm not shy. I just can't be bothered talking. Usually I just bore people shitless. That's okay.
Occasionally my silence is threatening. So the bloke next to me in the pub, or on the jetty, says to me, "let's go". And we punch each other in the head, repeatedly, in the desolate twilight of Western Australia's coast. Afterwards we're bleeding and joyous and mates.
That's how I roll.
ii
When Darwin appeared it was hot and blue. I got out of the ute. Young and straight and cocky in my new uniform. I felt good as gold. There were girls watching me on Darwin's big wide road.
"Strewth." The closest the old man ever came to swearing.
"Bye Dad." I said.
My father drove off with his strange dignity that always gave me the shits.
My mate from Bundedin, Big Mick, was there already. Mick was always there already. He laughed his laugh.
There's still a lot of people around who remember Big Mick, because there was something about him hard to get at, hard to describe, so I won't describe it or him.
"Time for your first legal beer, Jonah," he laughed.
The pub was called the CY O'Connor Arms, where I had my first coldie.
Big Mick laughed in his way and the girls outside shone up to him, dollied up in their minis and heels. He picked the one with bare feet and jeans. He picked her, and she knew she'd been picked.
I sipped at my beer and saw that Mick had somehow vanished as quickly as he'd appeared, like he always did, and always had done.
"Shit," I almost said. But before I could, a bunch of blokes were saying it for me.
"Shit! You 23rd Shithouse Company, mate?"
I hesitated. I was with 23rd Shithouse Company, but I didn't know these blokes.
"Carn, come the fuck over here, ya cunt!"
Then I got up eagerly. Like a bloody fool I loved these new mates already, and knew I always would.
It already felt wise and hard and right to be a fool.
iii
Sando and String were best mates from way back, with beige hair and twinkling blue eyes. I guess these days, if you saw them in a park, you'd think maybe they were both child molesters. Things were different back then.
We got drunk on the cold beer that does no harm to anyone, and talked as boys will.
Shit, I was only 18, Chook was 18, String and Sando were maybe 18.
Frog was 19, and took it all in quietly, with his quick older eyes that missed nothing and noticed anything.
Big Mick was 18 but could've been any age, and who cared anyway, how old he was, because he was behind a lantana bush with a barefoot girl, whistling and laughing and doing bird calls.
When the night's beauty seemed to peak, there was a savage scream, strange to my ears.
I wondered what it would be like, to be Big Mick.
Chook was in the dunny, String and Sando were playing two up, and Frog had grabbed the didj off some black fella.
He played it with intense privacy.
Chook was still in the dunny.
Outside I caught a shy movement, a glimpse of legs and slowly, gorgeously, the lantana bush revealed Big Mick's bare-footed girl. She put on thongs.
I wondered what it would be like, to be like Big Mick.
iv
The next day was more tough and real. But I was still proud like a fool, and even now I say I was foolishly wise in the hard way that knows. Like my long young feet and toes knew how to feel inside my new badass combat boots. I was gonna get some life. A taste of life. Bring it on.
Sarge Klipp was stony-faced, tanned, blond, and tough.
He spared us all bullshit and just eyeballed us for a good long hard thirty minutes.
"He's orright," muttered String as we stood completely still, allowing this calm strange man to stare at us.
We didn't know yet that Sarge was the kind of tough that always did it tough when the tough got going and the going got so tough that it was fucking tough enough.
Sarge had an ocean deep sorrow, a thing of his own, which he cherished and nursed.
None of us would ever find out what this strange silent man meant or what he dreamed of when he howled in the night.
CHAPTER 2
IN THE SHIT
i
Sometimes I wondered just what the hell we were doing there.
One day in Vietnam, we're in a forrest and Sarge wants us to check out this big brown hole in the middle of a whole lotta green shit, trees and leaves and grass.
It was a swamp, maybe.
It stretched and shuddered and swallowed Mick, Chook, Frog and all the other bastards.
I don't like nostalgia so I started to leave immediately but then I heard a noise.
Big Mick was spewed up like a hermit crab from this black hole in the universe.
ii
Big Mick made it back to Sydney but his legs stayed in Nam.
I was talking less than ever. But something new was happening down the Cross.
Disco - and for me, every night was Saturday night.
Bitterly, Big Mick rolled in after me in his wheelchair. It was like he was daring you to punch him. I thought one night he'd maybe go crazy. Or at least go home.
One night I met her. Dirty blonde hair, big brown eyes, two arms, two legs, an arse.
"Angel", her name was. My problem princess. Anything she wanted, she got, unless it was inappropriate.
I dealt pot and a small quantities of illegal abalone and lean roo meat, but nothing uncool. Angel designed wetsuits and knitted beanies. She spun the wool herself from a spinning wheel. Big Mick provided the fleece for the beanies.
The thing is, I needed beautiful people.
Soon Angel wasnt beautiful enough anymore. I looked at her arse one morning and wondered.
Something was missing - people, and life and love.
I kicked Angel's arse, hard, and looked at myself in the mirror.
I looked goddamn good.
I needed a way to prove my love for Angel. She thought love meant I had to do gay shit. Like talking. She even wanted me to do things. I would've done anything for her, if I'd wanted to.
Strewth. Shit.
I had to figure out how to show my love for Angel and Big Mick without words, actions, thoughts or feelings.
"Stuff to line up babe," I said. The punters wanted more abalone, more wetsuits, more fleece and a shitload more cannabis.
Tough gig, but by lunchtime I'd done it.
But when I got home to my brothel, Angel was crying. She was packed to go to the bus station. I had yet another wave of insight and barely-credible feeling.
I said, "There's nothing happening at the bus station that can't be happening here."
My Angel was pregnant.
I gave up disco, coffee, cigarettes and coke.
And then one hot day in the morning, Angel died tragically and totally unexpectedly of a heroin overdose, shortly after talking back to me.
CHAPTER THREE
My mate Spandy took over business and I sank back into the beanbag for a well deserved rest.
My kids were born soon after. They were cards.
They would've said I was the best Dad ever, if they hadn't been taken out of my care because I was too subversive.
The 80s were nearly done.
Spandy had to chop me hand off though. He was fighting with Diff, our smack connection, to defend me honor. I irresponsibly got between them, accidentally grabbing Diff's dick and nads. So I lost me hand.
I got into bed with a bottle of cheap port and my didj for good.
I listen now to Western Australia's Indian Ocean crying for me and for the whole bloody wonder and strangeness of life.