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  After the farmer and Saul had finished their glasses and Pat had taken one sip out of his half, they headed outside to take the photos.

  ‘I’ll just get my gun,’ the farmer said, again disappearing into another room. Saul let Pat walk out ahead, Saul stayed behind and drank the rest of Pat’s glass. The farmer came back, this time with a long leather satchel slung over his shoulder. Saul smiled at him as he came out. The farmer smiled back, touched Saul on the back.

  ‘Come on son, let’s have some fun.’

  Pat was waiting in his car with the engine on. Contemptuous little fucker. The farmer led Saul in the direction of his ute.

  ‘Hop up there on the back and hang on tight to the roll bar.’ He jumped in the driver’s seat and wailed on his horn. ‘Come on Pat,’ he called. ‘You’re not getting far in that thing.’

  Pat begrudgingly killed the engine in his car, opened the door and stepped out. He reached into the back seat and took out his bags of cameras. Saul thought it interesting the cameras were on the back seat. Maybe Pat still wanted him to sit up front or maybe that was for the farmer. Pat made his way to the passenger side of the ute and climbed in, didn’t say a word to Saul as he did.

  The ute sparked into life, its diesel engine growling, the farmer’s radio had been left on and boomed out some bizarre strains of world music, maybe Brazilian, maybe Argentinean. As the ute took off in the direction of the spot, Saul clung tight as he stood up tall, wind in his face. The farmer was right, the temperature had dropped fast. The music was driving through Saul’s brain along with the beer, wine and whisky. The ute swung from left to right as it traversed the rocky pathways and dips of the bush track. It then levelled off and the ute built up its speed, someone turned the music up inside the cab, Saul guessed it wasn’t Pat.

  Saul jumped down from the ute onto the hard earth. The light of the moon was fairly bright and Saul could make out a run of grass trees standing well over twelve foot tall. They were sturdy black-barked trees that knobbled upwards and often ended in two prongs. Instead of leaves at the top of the tree were long strands of hard grass, some about two metres in length. They did for the Australian bush what cactus does for the American west.

  ‘Now Saul, just stand in front of that one to your left,’ Pat had set up a small blue lantern which gave enough light to make out the shapes on the ground.

  Pat was talking to Saul again. He began to play with the settings on his cameras, looking through the lens, setting off the flash, moving about from different angles.

  ‘Ok,’ said Pat, ‘I think we’re ready for the tree now.’

  ‘Hang on,’ the farmer called, fishing for a lighter in his pockets and moving next to Saul under the tree. ‘All right then,’ he said with the lighter in hand, ‘let’s put on the party lights.’

  With that the farmer walked behind Saul and held the lighter flame to the grass trees. The first spot caught fire, then he did the same on the other side of the tree. In seconds, the entire tree burst into a roaring sixteen foot ball of flame. The ground all around Saul and Pat and the farmer turned a brilliant orange, the heat from the blaze was tremendous. The grass tree raged on and Pat began clicking away on his camera and shouting directions at Saul.

  ‘Put your left shoulder slightly forwards and look down towards your shoes.’

  ‘Kneel down on the ground, move slightly in towards the tree.’

  After thirty seconds the fire began to die down, the grass shoot had all been burnt and now the stumps of the prongs glowed, swelling in the dark.

  ‘Right, now with the gun,’ the farmer said, taking over the directions. ‘Let’s use this one next time.’

  The farmer pointed to an even larger grass tree a few metres away. Saul headed over, the farmer unzipped his satchel and produced a long barrelled shotgun which stood nearly a metre and a half from end to end.

  ‘I used all my blanks up last weekend scaring feral cats, so we’re going live. This is how you do it: snap open, drop in the shells, snap closed, two clicks back, point, aim, bang.’

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t load live rounds, guys,’ Pat said, ducking his head out from over his camera. The farmer let off two quick shots into the night air. He reloaded it again repeating his instructions, sticking it in Saul’s hands. SHELLS, SNAP, CLICK, POINT, AIM, BANG. The farmer took the lighter back out of his pocket, set the giant grass tree on fire and ran out of shot.

  Again the fire roared into the air, the black-orange glow burst into the night sky. Shards of fire rained down over Saul as the giant grass tree crackled and scorched behind him. Saul could feel the barrel of the shotgun warming in his hands. He couldn’t hear Pat as well as before. He turned towards the camera holding the barrels towards Pat. Pat seemed to shrink behind his camera and began walking backwards.

  ‘Turn to the right Saul, turn to the right!’ Pat was shouting now.

  Saul turned his body to the right, swinging the long barrel across him. He raised the gun to the night sky, he could see the reflection of the blaze run down the double barrels stretching out towards the stars. Saul felt drunk with power, with wine, with life. The inferno behind him burned hard and hot, Saul could feel his back roasting under the heavy coat.

  ‘Point aim bang!’ screamed the farmer from somewhere in the darkness. ‘Point aim bang!’

  Saul pulled hard on the trigger. The first shot rocked him on his heels, he wobbled backwards off balance; the second blew him off his feet entirely into the base of the tree. Saul lay looking up at the blaze still burning, sprinkling flecks of fire over his body. He felt a glow in his heart, rocks under his back, and heard Pat shouting at the farmer who was laughing hysterically.

  (From My Dog Gave Me the Clap, a novel, 2011.)

  JON DOUST

  TO THE HIGHLANDS

  It was 1968. The world was falling apart. Bits of it were burning. In Europe, Britain and America students were running amok. In Perth they did what they always did: studied, got pissed, stumbled in and out of relationships, played tennis, went to the beach, fought, fucked, bragged about fucks that never existed, and drove cars into fences, trees and other cars. When I left school most of the kids in my year went on to university, as they should, because my old school, Grammar School for Boys, expected it, their parents expected it, they expected it. They were future leaders and had to be groomed to take over. My shocked parents did not cope well with my final exam results and my mother tried to rip my face off. Dad stepped in, pushed Mum out of the way, and gave me to the bank, Australia’s first bank, The Colonial Bank of Australia. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me down to the local branch and said to the manager: Take him, or I’ll kill him. Well, he didn’t say that, but his look did.

  I hated the bank. My career was a series of fits and starts. I was good with people, so my enquiry counter work was well reviewed. Numbers were not a strong point and so my stints as a batch clerk, agency teller relief and ledger examiner with responsibility for balancing the day’s incomings and outgoings across the entire branch, were not well reported. My weeks were long, boring and highlighted by the daily early-morning erection. Once I was on the bus and it began its stop–start routine there was nothing I could do to stem the rising lizard. I enjoyed the sensation, and hated the embarrassment.

  I wasn’t alone; there were other bankers like me, failed sons on early-morning buses, battling bulging pants and wealthy middle-class parents who had spent thousands on exclusive, wasted educations. We were biding our time, waiting for an opportunity to crop up, dad to give us a job in the family business, grandfather to die and leave us a million, a mate to score us a job with his stockbroker father, or another one to fix us up with an easy job making big money with his dad’s mining company, or marriage to that blonde chick, the one whose parents owned the supermarket chain.

  Some mornings I woke, full of the heavy clouds from the night before, and sat there, on the end of the bed, wondering what sort of a life it was, the one I was living. I had a job I detested, wor
ked with people who bored the shit out of me, like the accountant in the Gosnells branch who insisted on talking to me about farm machinery because he grew up on a farm and he once met my dad and I couldn’t say anything like you’re a knob, mate, and you’re giving me the shits because if I did he might give me a bad report and I’d be back working the batch clerk’s job which was the most boring job in the entire banking system because all you did all day was pick up forms, stamp them, sort them and hand them over to the ledger examiner who was the next most boring person in the branch and all he wanted to talk about was English soccer because that’s where he was from and when he did he talked with one of those whingeing accents that turned your blood cold and your fists hot.

  Dad wanted me to sit my leaving and matriculation exams again. He made me go to night-school. I hardly ever went because I knew I’d only fail again and because the two TAFE teachers looked like they belonged in a bank. Whenever I spoke to Dad or Mum on the phone, or they visited the city, all I ever got was: Why can’t you be more like your brother Thomas? Or Tim Bentley, who was studying medicine, or Barbara Perkins, who was studying history? Even most of the boys in my class, the bottom class, got into university. Thomas was in university studying law. I was working in a bank. Down at the Rotary club the conversation was all about Thomas.

  Someone in the back of my head kept talking to me. It might have been Jesus or the Phantom, I could never put a name to him, but he kept on at me about living a good and moral life and doing unto others as I would have done unto me and fighting injustice and defeating the communist bastards, but the voice wasn’t strong enough and I found myself living the strange life of someone I didn’t know, someone I had happened upon while in search of the real me.

  The day I flew out to the islands, Dad had a Rotary conference to attend in Bunbury. He had to be there, not only because he was president of the Genoralup club but because he was working his way through the ranks of other club presidents and aiming to become a district governor. I drove down to see them the weekend before. As usual we sat around the kitchen table, drinking Mum’s all-milk coffee brew and taking conversation leads from Dad.

  I still don’t think it’s a good idea, said Dad. But when you come home I’d like you to give a talk at Rotary.

  Sure, I said.

  And remember to eat plenty of salt and take your malaria pills.

  Right.

  That was pretty much it. Mum cried, of course, kissed me with her lips pursed and Dad crushed my hand. Dad didn’t say what he really thought and neither did I. Why would we? What good would it do? He thought I was useless and didn’t believe for a minute that the bank had chosen me, that I was a chosen one, that it was grooming me for higher office. And I thought he was a prick who was determined to make sure my life was as dull and lacking in adventure as his and his Rotarian mates’. We were Grammar School boys, all of us: Dad, my older brother Thomas, and everybody who meant anything to anybody including young brother Bill who was already booked in for his high school years.

  My old schoolmate, Brett Jones, picked me up and took me to Perth airport. There was a mob there to see me off. Some old school friends, a few mates from the bank, a couple of blokes from the football club and an almost, could have been, girlfriend, Megan Stirling. She was going out with a friend of mine but as soon as she saw me she would laugh. Older blokes told me that was a good sign, if a girl laughed at you, or with you, I wasn’t sure which was best, or what the difference was. They said I should have a crack at her, make a move, step in, work my charm. I wasn’t sure. Her boyfriend was a mate. But Megan arrived at the airport alone.

  Megan had great hair. You could see she worked on her hair. She was about my height and when she walked her eyes sort of danced around and her hips kind of swayed and her legs formed calves. I loved a leg with a calf. When I was in high school I was desperately in love with the well-calved Sandra Johnston who was interschool one hundred yards champion and I wanted her calves and mine to lock and rub because I was fast too and my calves were strong and well defined but I wasn’t a champion, only ever good enough for the relay team.

  Megan liked me. I could tell by the way her eyes found mine and the way her mouth almost laughed as soon as I spoke her name: Megan Stirling, oh yes, stirling.

  Everyone was pretty happy. The Orbit Inn at Perth airport seemed to have different rules to the rest of the city. The beers flowed over the bar and no one said: Hey you! You’re underage. In West Australia the drinking age was twenty-one and I couldn’t wait to get to the islands because there the drinking age was the same as in Victoria and New South Wales, eighteen. If the drinking age was eighteen, I reckoned it probably meant a lot of other things were possible too, like the things you’d heard about Sydney, Sin City, and other things, things I hadn’t thought of, things I had thought of but was too shy or afraid to mention, and things that were impossible anywhere else on earth.

  As all the blokes pushed me towards the departure gate, stumbling and dropping my carry-on luggage, Megan came up behind me and put her arms around me. I turned my face into her face and we kissed, full on. The blokes yelled and whistled but we kept on kissing and I could feel my pants tighten due to the lizard growing inside them. When she let my lips go she whispered in my ear: We should have done that ages ago. My face got hot and red and I pretended to stumble again and the sound of her laughter only encouraged the lizard and so I ran away to the gate that led to the plane that led to Sydney where I caught the next plane that led to the islands.

  Hey, yelled a man at my door.

  Jesus! You scared the shit out of me.

  Yeah, he said, you me too. Gidday, I’m Ted Robinson. From Brisbane.

  What are you doing here?

  I live in a room down the back. You must be the new bloke from Perth.

  Must be. Jack Muir.

  We shook hands. Ted was one of those blokes you liked, soon as you set eyes on him. Tall, rangy, tanned, broad-shouldered, just what you’d imagine a Queenslander would look like.

  Breakfast?

  Huh? Yeah. Where?

  Up the new mess. Didn’t anyone tell you anything? I’ve got a motorbike. I’ll give you a lift.

  You think I should put my pants on?

  Ha ha. Might as well. The sheilas up there aren’t worth leaving them off for.

  Robinson rode a motorbike like you would imagine a Queenslander would, hell for leather, low around a bend, fast as Flint up a hill, zippy across an intersection, all the while talking his head off over his shoulder.

  There’s a good bunch of blokes in the bank, he yelled. Most nights we go to a bar over in the satellite town, Bulimbi. Some of the sheilas go too but they aren’t much to look at. A big night is when a mob of mixed race tarts turn up. Oh, mate, they are something.

  As he talked I kept my eyes on the road. It wasn’t much of a road but I grew up in a house at the end of a gravel track, so anything with bitumen was okay by me. This road was sealed but it looked like great lumps of tar had been tossed off the back of a truck. Along the road natives walked, mostly men and some women with things sitting on or hanging off their heads. The vegetation looked sparse and dry, not the lush tropical growth I had expected.

  Looks a bit dry, I yelled at the back of Robinson’s head.

  Won’t be long, he yelled back. The wet season’ll get underway any minute.

  When Robinson turned his bike off in the new bank mess driveway, he stood beside his Honda Black Bomber and said: What do you reckon?

  Nice bike, I said.

  I love it and there’s one more thing I gotta have before I leave this bloody place.

  What’s that?

  A trip to the Islands of Love.

  What?

  You never heard of them?

  Nuh.

  They’re on the other side of the main island. I know blokes who’ve been there. They reckon you just walk up to sheilas, ask for a fuck and if they like the look of you, you’re in. Sex is just a game for them.

&nb
sp; You’re joking.

  Nuh. You interested?

  Of course I was, but I didn’t say it out loud. I wanted sex, I was clear about that, but I was still a virgin, and still a bit scared of the wrath of a God who was no longer with me, or didn’t exist. Then there was the wrath of a mother who believed that sex was created by the Heavenly Man so we could reproduce, and fucking for fun was a sin and deserving of retribution.

  The dining room was nothing like my old boarding school dining room. It was like a large restaurant with modern chairs, tables, no prefects at their heads, all very civilised. People lined up for food served by native men through a servery. The furniture and general decor was plain and functional but the view out the large windows and across the bay was spectacular.

  Come on, Jacky, let’s get food, said Robinson. After breakfast I’ll take you down to the bank and we’ll see if we can’t get the day off to ride you around town.

  As people passed us they said: Gidday, Robbo. And: What are you up to, Robbo? Then: You already corrupted the new bloke, Robbo? Finally: Jesus, Robbo, haven’t they sent you home yet? Right after breakfast, we walked into the main branch of the bank. It sat on the ground floor of the two-storey building, just below the old quarters where Robbo and I lived as the only occupants.

  You better come meet the branch accountant, said Robbo. He said he knows you. He’s a West Aussie too.

  There was no need to find his office, Richard Symons was already out of it and walking towards us. That must have been why I got the job, my big break in the banking world, because Symons had headed the two bank training schools back in Perth, the two schools where Jack Muir shone, rose above the pack. There you are, Jack, said Symons. Good to see you again. How was your flight?

  Great, Mr Symons, I said. It was a long flight but I managed to stay above ground.