…and now on to the July edition of our minizine, with more unabashed anticipation than the Diviners.
In this edition Michael Farrell sees the imagined, Tiggy Johnson lays out hungover logic and Carly-Jay Metcalfe hears a tale in the howling wind and the beating sun.
Look homeward, angels!
Jeremy
The Black Rider
By Michael Farrell
a car, a red car, drives off the
road & round the back of the boys head.
theres a green truck there, crying because he doesnt
want sweet potato for dinner. the car thinks the
truck is a ‘big crybaby’. ‘better
than a grapefruit sandwich for lunch’, the car
says. the trucks parents will probably come in &
take the truck off to bed any minute if he
doesnt eat. suddenly its a hot day & they
all go to the beach to ride on the tigers
the truck is laughing, the back of the boys
head is laughing, everybody is eating chocolate & getting
balloons & surprises & watching funny stuff on tv.
felix gets a new friend in the mail, he
is french & has a tattoo that says ‘sacre
rouge’! his name is cedric. he says
‘ecoutez’, & does a big raspberry in
felixs ear. felix pours lemonade down the back of
cedrics shirt, which feels nice at first, but
later, unbearably sticky. luckily felixs parents werent looking
theres a monster in the garden, but felix has
a big sword to save everyone with. the monster
has melty green eyes & the breath of a million
dirty socks. felix accidentally destroys a flower bush.
the monster trips onto the barbecue & gets turned into
enough sausages for everyone. everyone pays felix lots of
money & tells him that hes a great chef.
felix builds a castle with a toilet reserved for him
only. he sleeps in amazing pyjamas made of monster
skin, & goes to the sun in a rocket
By Tiggy Johnson
the morning after a night of Sambuca shots, Strongbow Draught and the house white you couldn’t tolerate earlier. You roll around in bed, on the couch, the floor, searching for that magic position where you might avoid spewing like a retarded water feature. Or sleep, hopefully, for the rest of the day, two maybe, until you can hold down a mouthful of water. But the best you can manage is to try not to move, because, if you achieve that, even for a moment, there may be relief. Until your mind returns and you almost wish you could vomit – again – your hungover logic suggesting you’ll feel better.
But it’s not really like that.
Because you’ve been there before and you know that far from being gone tomorrow, it will be worse. And more so the day after, and the day after that, and so on for the next seven weeks, because you just found out. And when you think you couldn’t possibly get through another day, and you’re waiting for death, because it has to be better than how you’re feeling
every
moment
of every
day
and you can no longer imagine what it ever felt like to not have your head over a toilet bowl – it disappears completely, as if you imagined it all along.
By Carly-Jay Metcalfe
Garnett Roy finished his last day the way he’d started, with a giant gash on his hand from a rogue saw.
A couple of the boys cleaned him up – said he’d need stitches, but he wrapped the bandage round the bloodied wound like a tourniquet and turned his trunk towards work. By the time he’d left, the bandage was unfurling and soiled from sawdust and the grime that came with it. For the last part of the day, it held torn and hanging flaps of skin together, the blood clotting with gravel, oil and splinters.
He looked at the sorry state of the cloth girding his hand and coiled the loosened layers round and round, stuffing the end into where the bloody score beat its own tune.
It was just before the onion of a sun dropped behind the Larkville range that Garnett knew he needed those stitches. With a pot of boiling water on the stovetop, he found a sewing kit he got at a hotel one time; threw the pine stick of a needle into the angry water, cut five inches of cotton. He unwound the bandage, dumped it in the sink and turned the water on it before remembering the clean bandage he had stowed away in the bathroom. Dipping a pair of tongs into the tuckered out pot, he fished out the needle, passed the thread through its tiny eye, and left it on the table to cool.
Washing down his hand, the blood gathered in the sink like paint waiting to be marbled onto paper. The more water that drove into the wound, the more it bled, so Garnett shut the water off, dried his hand with a tea towel, stoppered the wound with paper towel then reached into the cupboard for the whiskey. Garnett twisted off the cap and sealed his lips against the neck of the bottle. After a few gulps he sat it down and got to work on his hand. The paper towel was soggy, but the bleeding had slowed just enough for him to whack some stitches in. He jammed the needle through his gristly skin.
Fuck. Damn thing’s too small.
It would have to do, so he pressed the two flaps of skin against his sternum, all flush, and whip stitched his way across the gash ‘til it was good and tight. He threw back some more whiskey. By the time he was done, there wasn’t a lick of blood to be seen.
The next day, Garnett Roy would be gone.
Someone at a truck stop just outside Larkville had told him it was a good place to go. But after a while, it just didn’t do. Why he’d listened to a beefy trucker whose nose and ears sprouted wiry tufts of hair, Garnett did not know. He just needed somewhere. When it didn’t work, he headed for Grandamme where there was a call for men to work on the pipeline.
Gas and oil hadn’t let a man down yet, he figured. On the bus with his one-way ticket stuffed into his shirt pocket, Garnett felt that familiar warmth in his gut. He was running again.
Next morning, the bus pulled into Grandamme across the road from the Shire Hall. Garnett picked through the bags in the luggage hold, grabbed his swag and asked where he could get himself a cup of coffee.
There’s a truck stop back down the road, pointed the bus driver. You’ll get a good feed there, mate.
Righto.
Say, what’d you do to that hand of yours? asked the bus driver, fat head gesturing at the clean bandage.
Sliced it up, I guess.
Nice work. You got any stitches? to which Garnett shook his head.
Well, that’s somethin’. You take care, now. Go get yourself some coffee – you look like you need one, he cautioned.
Thanks, said Garnett, tipping his hat as he heel-toed it towards the only place that had an open door.
Everything else – the post office, the church, the local store and the paper shop – was still shut up. Two others followed Garnett to the truck stop, probably wanting a good feed themselves after fifteen hours of sitting on that rusty carcass of a bus, with only the odd break in which to piss or shit or vomit.
In 1974, Garnett Roy was a man of a different kind. Some would say a loner; others a nomad. He knew a lot but never said much. When he reached the truck stop, there were plenty of people slumped in booths, leaning on plywood tables with elbows like potato skins. Mostly men, faces grooved like the wheels of a locomotive had rolled over their cheeks, and a couple of girls for god knows what else. Walking in, Garnett looked around, felt a little wobbly. He sniffed the air, thick with the smell of bacon fat and percolated coffee. Green and white wallpaper peeled from each corner and wood veneer panels buckled from the lousy heat served up every day of summer. Paint blistered on the plaster ceiling and it sunk in uneven spots. Above the griddle. Smoke-fed plaster. He approached a stool at the bar and grabbed the attention of a waitress.
You got any postcards?
What you want a postcard for, eh? asked the woman behind the counter, spit gathering in the corners of her mouth.
Just to send, he said, dumping his swag on the dusty floor.
I got five left. They’re twenty-five cents each, she said, walking away and returning with the postcards fanned out in her hand. Take your pick.
I got this whole box of postcards once for a dollar, said Garnett.
An’ you sent ‘em all? she said, gap toothed grin making her red lips disappear.
Yeah. All of ‘em.
She nodded, still smiling.
I’ll take that one, thanks, he said, picking out a faded photograph of a Grandamme sunset, reflecting in the Grandamme River with some cows grazing by the water.
That’s probably the pick of the bunch.
Here, he said, fingering around in his top pocket for twenty-five cents, and I’ll have some coffee, too, thanks.
Comin’ right up.
Garnett looked over his hand, pressing the bandage down into the sinkhole of a wound.
Looks nasty, said a younger girl, pouring his coffee.
It’s nothin’. Thanks.
You’re welcome.
People were sure talkative here, he thought. Scratched his head like a dog would with its hind leg, all wild like he had fleas in that scraggly hair, and thought some whiskey would’ve been good in those cups of coffee.
After his fifth cup, and with nothing to eat, Garnett borrowed a pen from the young girl pouring his coffee, and addressed the postcard — Isaac M. Cronin, 2176 Wainwright Way, Moxhamville.
You’ll be needin’ a stamp for that? asked the young girl.
You got any? I mean, I’ll give you the money.
Sure, I got one right here, and she reached below the cash register.
She looked him over, then at his coffee cup.
I might as well have left the coffee pot with you — you’ve just about drained the whole thing. Here, she said, passing the stamp over her tongue and plopping it on the postcard, it’s on the house.
Well, thanks.
You gonna write anything?
Thanks for the stamp, said Garnett.
He got off the stool, the back of his thighs already wet from the orange vinyl and thought he’d best forage around the place for some work. It was all dig-ups, cutting and laying pipe, meter checks, pump operation, and lead plugging. All things he had done before. All things he would do again.
There was howl for workers, and it had a bus leaving for the site at 7am, so Garnett left his money under the coffee cup that’d been his friend for the last hour, picked up his swag, swung it over his shoulder and gave the postcard to the girl, asking her if she’d put it in the mail.
By the time she’d read what was on it, Garnett was out the door looking into a blaring sun rising over distant oilfields.
But you got nothin’ on it! she hollered, then studied the picture.
I guess he still wants me to post it, she said to herself, stuffing it into her apron so she wouldn’t forget.
After two years of dig ups, laying pipe, three snakebites, a broken collarbone and having a drunkard of a woman fall in love with him, Garnett was ready to move on. He still sent postcards. He still drank a lot of coffee. The skin on his back was as thick as an armadillo and he’d cut his hair; not a crew cut, but shorter all the same, showing off his double crown, like two typhoons on the back of his skull.
He’d found a place to rest his head in a shot-out caravan not far from town, with moth-eaten curtains, the door missing a hinge and a grey mattress so hard like it’d been stuffed with dead birds. He’d salvaged a forty-four gallon drum, which he painted black to wash in. Every morning, Garnett would fill it with boar water, so he’d have a warm bath when he got back to the van after a day’s sweat and blood and mud.
He’d caught yabbies during underwater dig-ups which he’d boil up for dinner; been so drunk that he’d climbed onto a boxcar and slept while it was shunted forward and back. There were dreams of being thrown from a moving car.
There’d been days where the rolling heat had stung Garnett’s shoulders like a thousand whips, and nights where the wind had thrown what felt like splinters of glass at his chest and legs, the wind so sharp it’d cut through his jacket like he had nothing on. It was on one of these nights after the wind had slapped his face in a cat fit that Garnett thought he’d go back to what he knew best — cattle.
He’d managed to buy himself a car, nothing special, but a car all the same. He wanted to start fresh, like a baby in the womb, so after packing up his things, he left the rent in a grubby envelope under the kettle, closed the door behind him and drove.
Garnett wasn’t looking forward to the bulldust traps he’d be driving through. The devil himself had chewed on the sun, and it bit on his arm as his hand stuck to the wheel. The dash could’ve fried an egg and the vinyl underneath him squelched, his pants driving a sweaty wedge up his ass. His ass cheeks slid across the vinyl seat under the wet cotton of his pants, his balls so hot like they’d been fried in a pan of stinking oil. The only time he stopped was to eat, piss, shit, or send a postcard. Sleep could wait. It never came to him easily anyways.
It took Garnett Roy all of three days to reach Luxtonville. By that time, he was fed up with the stink of vinyl between his legs and the stinging heat shooting off the dash. As he made his way into the centre of town, he leaned forward, chin on the wheel, thighs slip-sliding him closer to the edge of the seat. Garnett pressed his foot on the brake, numb from moving from pedal to pedal, and slowed to a stop. He dug his tongue up into the roof of his mouth, then traced it across his molars, down to the inside of his cheek, a metallic taste catching his attention from a couple of bleeding ulcers.
Watching a bird cartwheel off the gutter, landing on its feet, his eyes darted across to the pavement where two cattle dogs bit into each other’s tails like chew toys. There’d be a yelp when canine teeth bit down a little too eagerly, but apart from swinging tails and teats on the bitch hanging down like sparsely placed udders, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. Garnett unknotted himself out of the car, taking with him a couple of scrunched one dollar notes, walked to the bar, sat on a stool and asked for a beer and the time, in that order.
His beer arrived in a warm glass, straight out of the dishwater. He was about to say to himself at least the beer was cold, but he never got the time.
When did you pull in? interrupted a voice to Garnett’s right.
Garnett turned his neck around, and found himself looking into the eyes of a silver haired man with eyes the colour of sapphires.
Bartholomew Sutton. Everyone calls me Sutton.
Garnett Roy. Everyone calls me Garnett, he said with a wry smile, extending his hand.
Garnett Roy, eh? he said, handlebar moustache moving above his sunburned lip, smiling as he shook Garnett’s hand. So what’re you doin’ this far out west?
Work, he said sipping his beer.
Work, eh?
Yes sir.
I thought as much. What sorta work?
Cattle, station hand, that kinda stuff. Grew up on ‘em.
Well that’s all I ever done. I own a stud down the road. Longway station.
I’m guessing down the road means about a hundred or so clicks, to which Sutton nodded.
Whaddya grow? asked Garnett.
Santa Gertrudis, we run a few hundred sheep, but mainly just cattle. What’s your story?
Probably same as you. My dad had a station in South Australia. You probably wouldn’t a heard of the place. It’s a fair way outta the city. Probably four hundred kilometres south west of.
And you say you grew up there?
Yeah. Hung around ‘til I was about fifteen. Ditched school, that kind of thing. I used to go back, but not anymore. The place is like a squatter’s joint now. All I wanna do is work, I s’pose.
You wanna work?
S’what I’m here for.
Well it looks like fate’s just dealt you a hand.
Why’s that?
Garnett didn’t push to find out what had happened – Sutton was always going to tell him the story of how his friend had been killed.
I’ve never seen such a bloody mess. Peeled the top of his head off like a lid on a sardine can. In all my years I’ve seen my share of bad shit – farming accidents, people gettin’ barreled by bulls and shot; runnin’ horses into fences. Jack was rounding a bend and hit a tree. Looks like he’s overcorrected and gone slidin’ in the dirt.
Garnett mustered all the pity he had, shaking his head every few seconds.
Watched him grow up, I did. Watched him get married, too. Beautiful wife, young daughter. He whipped that shit brick of a stud into shape with his own two hands. I dropped like a bag a shit when I heard. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that his wife needs a hand. There’s no one else on the property and it won’t be long before the stud turns to shit. We’ve all helped out where we can, but Loretta really needs someone there permanently; someone who knows what the hell they’re doin’, he said, and raised his glass to his chapped lips.
So what’s happening with the stud?
Nothin’. That’s the problem. It’s starting to look like no man’s land, but a whole lotta calves’ just been born and there’s no one to do the things that need doing around the joint. I’ve managed to get some work done in the yards, but the place really needs a station hand. To tell you the truth, Loretta doesn’t know today from yesterday and we’re pretty sure that she’s tryin’ to say ‘thanks, but fuck off.’ And besides, young Tibby’s too young for all this, with school and losin’ her father. Whaddya say?
Are you sure about this? asked Garnett, shifting his empty glass around the soggy bar mat.
I got good intuition. I can give Loretta a call and drive you out there tomorrow.
I’d really appreciate that.
Wait here and I’ll call her from out back.
You own this place?
Sutton laughed, patting Garnett on the back before he turned heavily on his heel.
No, I’m just a good patron, he laughed.
Garnett couldn’t believe his luck. What a chance, then the sting of self-reproach. His eyes darted to the window where he saw clouds rolling across the sky. He saw a figure pushing another, as though helping it over a brick wall. He saw a sea horse cut across the solid blue. Garnett tinkered with the thought of the car crash, stopping just before he saw dead bodies and too much blood spatter on the windshield. He could feel the pained look on his face and tried to wipe it off by rubbing his ear awkwardly. He raised his arm for another beer. One for Sutton, too.
You look like you need an upper, not a downer, said the man behind the bar.
Garnett feigned a smile, I just need more beer.
Comin’ right up, mate.
Garnett heard heavy footsteps across the floor, looked up. Saw that flash of silver hair.
I got you a beer.
Thanks.
Least I can do.
So I spoke to Loretta and she said you can start as soon as you’re settled.
True? You’re not havin’ me on?
True. Whaddya say?
I’m real grateful for all you’ve done, but to be honest, I feel a bit strange about it.
Listen, you seem like a nice guy. You know what you’re doing; you know how to run a stud and Cumberland could do with someone like you. Work is work, Garnett. You should take it. C’mon. You’ve come all this way to knock back a job? It’s not as though you’re lookin’ after his family or nothin’. I know you’ll get the stud back into shape. I think you should take Loretta up on her offer. It pays well, too.
That sorta makes me feel worse.
Just take it. What’ve you got to feel bad about? It was an accident. Not nothin’ anyone can do ‘bout that.
Garnett looked Sutton in the eye as he swallowed the last of the bubbles from his beer.
Okay.
Good. Now Hoyt said you could sleep here tonight, didn’t ya Hoyt?
A blonde mop popped up from under the bar.
Yeah, we got a caravan, ‘cept it’s got no roof.
Well it don’t rain much out here, so it shouldn’t be a problem, said Sutton.
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