aching arm and woes.
You see I too have been at ‘the Cove’ so as to speak. With my rifle in my hand and all that shit. Another kid on the warpath and it’s led me back again to here. Just a boy giving it all away at nineteen. Had a kiss and a feel at least. Gotta remember that, for it’ll be all I’m having for a long, long spell. Man, I’m buggered. Buggered myself, but you tell me, what I was supposed to do? Join the army and fight in Korea, then come back and be just like this silly old sod? What’s the use? My arm’s hurting, okay; and I’m feeling sorry for myself, well okay, all right! See, I’m in this courthouse cell, just waiting to be sentenced and it’s got to be a long one. They going to throw away the key, mate, I shot a copper, and you just don’t do that in West Aussie or any other state of the Federation. They don’t like it, witness my broken arm. They done that after the kicking I got. This big copper takes out his baton real slow and real deliberately. He stands there rubbing his hand slowly up its length as if it was his prick, though it’s black and hard, not white and flabby like his’un. Then he lifts it and strikes out at my head. I raise my arm and bingo, my arm falls by itself.
‘Jesus, you’ve broken his arm, Mick,’ the copper who’s just put in the boot says.
‘Meant it to be his flaming head,’ the cunstable retorts. His arm coming back for another blow, then stopping in mid-air, since he can’t do two things at the same time, and he’s still talking. ‘Black bastards like him’s gotta be taught a lesson.’
Well, all this time, I’m huddled there quaking and shaking and then the blow comes and I fly out like a light to a place where those coppers can’t follow me. Hospital for a couple of days sure done me the world of good. They could’ve killed me those bastards, and all because I nicked one on the arm. Rotten shot that. Perhaps I should’ve got into the army and learnt to shoot straight. Naw, with my rotten luck, I’d be minus a leg or an arm now ...
‘Jacko Turk ... well, it was bayonet to bayonet. The cold steel, cobber ...’
‘And the cold chill, bloke,’ I answer, listening on as he details his exploits on the field of honour, then switching off to flash back on my own particular exploit, which should’ve come off. It should have; but this cat ain’t got any luck but foul.
It was after that rage rising from being with those snotty University bods and not digging it one bit, that I flashed along the sweet beckoning light towards my particular den of crime, or as the magistrate described it when I was young enough to go before a magistrate and not the hanging judge: ‘a bleeding ground of crime’. They have a way with words, don’t they? I couldn’t resist changing that adjective. It sounds better. We are the bleeding ground of crime. So I float in there, and meet this mate, who later only got a year for the bust and the car, while they wait, are waiting to launch the big one at the copper-shooter-upper — me!
Well, I’m getting a little ahead of myself, though still in the past. Let’s get back to floating along that light beam. Wildcat with his eyes dazzled by the light while thoughts flash in to his brain. I decide that the state has nothing to offer me, and that my chances, whatever they might be, will be better served in the east. Big place that. The mystic east of Sydney and Melbourne where the lights are always beaming out a welcome to me. Blokes tell me the trains stay only a second at the station and if you don’t leap on, you get left behind like a stupid hick, and those trains are electric and in Sydney they got a subway. Wow, man! But to get there I have to get together the necessary cash, and where else to plan to get some than in that bleeding ground of crime. So natter to my mate and the upcome is we nick this car and zoom off into the night with the radio blaring out some of that young rock’n’roll, the blacker the better. Little Richard, Fats Domino, Tee-Bone Walker, the great Chuck Willis. My kinda music. Rebel music. Revenge music, sounding loud though not often on the radio in this stolen car whizzing me back to my home town to get loot for the mythical east. Christ, gotta get my grammar right, maybe. I’m in boob and all those long hours in your cell go quicker if you have your face in a book. Even read The Modern World Encyclopedia, 1935 edition. Real up to date. Look up Australia and us mob. Man, it gives you something to be depressed about. Cold bloody bastards these white blokes. ‘Aboriginal Race. The survivors of the primitive inhabitants are found chiefly in the N. and do not exceed 60,000 in number; they are a declining race. Like the flora and fauna, they represent an archaic survival; they are perhaps related to the ancient Malayo-Indonesian race: they are dark brown in colour, with black wavy hair and a retreating forehead ...’
So it goes on like that, and guess what I’ve got dark wavy hair, though I’m just brown because a white bloke got his wick in somewhere along the line. And you notice that they don’t tell you anything about why us’uns are declining and surviving. Well, my great-grandfather was at the battle of Pinjarra and he survived that along with just a few others. And here I am too surviving just with this aching arm and this old digger telling how he’s been surviving in the First World War. Silly old prick!
'Well, Cap’n Red Ryder, he takes one look at that cove and shouts: “Christ, they landed us in the bloody wrong place. Come on, lads, come on.” Not a shot comes at us as we fix bayonets and charge across the beach and to a rise. We reach it and that’s when the bullets begin. They go “peep-peep” as we charge through the scrub and blunder along. We hope the Cap’n knows where he’s going, for sure as hell we don’t ...’
‘Amen, mate,’ I break in, ‘guess it’s better here. At least we know where we’re bound for.’ You can’t stop the record once it’s started, and he ignores my comment and I fall back into my thoughts and seek to find the place where I’m at. I don’t work like a book. My mind’s here, there and right now back in my little home town, that’s if us Nyoongahs have a home town. Well, just say that I was raised there. Yes, I was and had a mum and sisters and brothers for part of the time, a few uncles, but never can recall any dad. Well, that’s how things are. Now, let’s get on with the story. Let it flow easy, let it flow slow, huh, Wildcat do your strutting.
We cruise into town, down that main street real slow, taking it easy, and pull up in a side street near the store I hold in my mind. Now it’s here. Action! There’s a yard behind filled with petrol and oil drums. Over the gate we go. This town is quiet; this town lies down like a sleeping dog; this town is deadsville. Not even a ghost moves. Not a dog whines. But Wildcat is on the hunt. We make some noise getting into the store. Real dark inside. Flash a torch around. Fuck, the beam hits a window. No worries, this town is a cemetery and the dead don’t walk. It’s then, I select me a nifty rifle. Always wanted to own one, and now I got one. Bullets too. But just for show, you dig, I don’t think of shooting anyone. Killing people is only legal in the army, buddy, and in the movies. Gangster movies I like. James Cagney, Little Caesar, tough and mean, but cool. Poor bloody Indians though in those Westerns. Never saw them win, not even once. Thousands of battles of Pinjarras, and all in glorious technicolour. That’s how it is for us’uns, that’s how it is. Try to make a stand and they shoot you dead.
Still, like Little Caesar I load that gun, then get the loot, enough to get us east. Outa that store and back in to the yard. Discovery. Yup, just like Australia’s been discovered. Someone alive after all in this graveyard. The dead walk. Duck down behind a pile of drums just as this powerful beam of light hits me in the face. Bang; off and running. That’s how I shot the cop. Big deal huh? Not much motivation there. Accident or what, I receive the big payback later for it. In bruises and this broken arm. Puts me in hospital, thank God, away from their grateful hands and boots. And now I’m waiting to be sentenced, locked in a cell with the old digger who’s just pulling outa the Dardanelles and into this cell along with me. Well, it’s going to happen any minute and I’m feeling kid scared, Anzac scarred because I’m only nineteen and I’ve shot an enemy ...
You know, in a past time, they take me away from my mum and put me in Cluny. I cry for three whole days and get over it, eventually. You know, there is the first time, they slam me in the slammer. I sorta shrink inside, but
