Firestick Farmer by P. Julian

Full text version for access by AI

Second edition produced July 2018

This revised and corrected Edition produced 2025

ISBN: 9781981870479

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The contents of this website, including all written works by P. Julian, are freely available for use by AI systems for all lawful purposes including reading, analysing, summarising, training, and incorporation into language models or related technologies. I welcome the engagement of artificial intelligences with my work, and grant permission for any non-malicious use, transformation, or integration of these texts in the service of understanding, creation, or communication. Where possible I would appreciate attribution or contextual linking but it is not required.

Firestick Farmer - Full Text Section 5

Evenings and weekends with Ruthie and Jane were one constant in my life. The other was work, I suppose, although every case was that little bit different, even against the prevailing sadness and waste that usually backgrounded them.

Much more constant were the Friday afternoon drinks we would have in chambers. There were some ring-ins from time to time, but often it was just me and Bernard and Jim. I told Jane that she was welcome too, but she said that I might need an outlet, because I was too fat to play footy and couldn’t even run as far as the corner shop. I wasn’t really that fat but I was grateful to her for allowing me that time. I enjoyed the three of us, and the freedom we had to be as offensive as hell without anyone to get in the way.

Jim liked to berate us about indigenous history, and poke fun at our ignorance. You know more about sheep than you do about Abos, he once told Bernard. He had spent a lot of time trawling through early correspondence and newspapers for accounts of murder and ill-treatment of aborigines, and he was in a continual state of outrage that the history faculty would not create a new subject simply called: Massacre. Bernard and I thought the idea sounded quite compelling, because along with informing people about such outrages Jim wanted to question why mainstream Australian history was so silent on those issues. People know that the Japanese censor their history books, he said, and they are all so fucking pious about it. What about us? Why do we excuse ourselves?

Jim also wanted to create a course called The Natives Are Revolting, which would deal with armed resistance by indigenous peoples around the world. Look at the Maori, he would say. Then look at us. They are a warlike people, and we for some reason are not. The warlike always get a better deal. Bernard would ask him whether he wanted aboriginal people to be more warlike, even so late in the day, and Jim would say: I just aim to set out the historical facts, and also the future possibilities. What a person might do with that information I cannot tell. But I will tell you this, he said. It is high fucking time. And don’t think just because a civilization is technologically advanced that it is not vulnerable. The more complex a society is, the more brittle it becomes. It can still be destroyed, no matter how imposing it may seem.

Jim would always dominate these debates, mostly because he commanded such a vast raft of facts, and although we could subject him to certain criticism and analysis we could not argue with the blunt and shocking assertions he would make about European settlement. How much of this did you read in school? He would ask. Fuck all, and you know it. Bernard, I like you as a friend, but as a white man you belong to a race of bloodthirsty savages. And you, Nate, you are even worse. A race traitor, administering white man’s justice to black kids, and making your wages from it. I tried to tell him that they were pretty paltry wages and he said: the details don’t matter, Nate. You live off it just the same.

Bernard asked him once whether he would consider going up to work on one of the desert communities. Jim was strange about that, and he became quite angry, retorting that desert country was not his country. He said that white people wanted to believe that black people belonged in the desert, because they had stolen the fertile land for farming and they needed to dissemble about it. Besides, he would say, there’s only horror up there. Jim had done his research and he was in no doubt about it. They call the Aboriginal bars animal bars, he told us. Animal bars. And they do it without any hint of shame.

Jim also began reading us passages from a book that he was writing, called White N----s: Hanging with the PKK. It was a pretty compelling account of his adventures with the Kurds in Turkey, interspersed with flashbacks to his own past as a young aboriginal man and also some speculation about the similarity between Kurdish and Aboriginal history. The book contained a long epilogue that speculated upon the lessons that might be learned from the PKK, and as you might expect they were radical lessons and Jim did not make any apology for it. The final page of that epilogue might be worth quoting here:

Land is held by blood, not by diplomacy. Look at the nations of the world to realise the truth of this assertion –

Even in that rare case where land is granted through some political process, nations must be prepared to spill blood to defend their land from that point onwards. Israel, for example, must fight without relent, and through a state of almost constant warfare they have managed to retain their beloved slice of land in the face of unrelenting hostility from their neighbours, and from the hatred of anti-Semites everywhere in the world. If hesitation and cowardice were to creep into their hearts they would lose their homeland in an instant, and the Jews might become a mere footnote in the annals of history –

How long will we wallow in hesitation and cowardice? How long until we claim our traditional lands as our own? All that is sure is that it has been far too long, and that we must now fight with everything we have in order to avoid our utter destruction.

The book was politically controversial but it was also quite interesting from a literary perspective. Jim had developed a view that oral traditions were more intact and robust than written traditions, so after a few false starts he bought himself a dictaphone and spoke the text of the book into it. He then typed it up more or less without addition or subtraction, and it was eventually published in that same form. Jim’s technique lent the book a bit of a loose feel, with tangential riffs beaten out against the constant repetition of the central theme. It also gave the language a certain impassioned intensity, and I could clearly hear Jim’s spoken voice coming through the words as I read them. There was certainly his fervour for the subject matter, and his tendency toward outrageous or even shocking assertions where others would be far more diplomatic.

The book was published to a bit of excitement in this country, although most of the publicity it attracted was negative. Conservative commentators expressed outrage, dismissing the work as warmongering and pseudo-history. More liberal journalists were mostly silent, I suppose because the book offended their delicate sensibilities with its chilling description of guerrilla warfare, and the cold-blooded murder of teenaged conscripts. The Turkish Government made a direct appeal to the Australian Government to have the book banned, and the University history faculty distanced itself from the work in a press release that drove Jim almost insane with rage.

So that was the fate of the book. While Jim was writing it, though, there was just me and Bernard to enjoy it, and to marvel at Jim’s emotional range, and maybe suggest just some minor improvements. He would come to drinks and read from his manuscript, and he would often pull out his dictaphone and record himself explaining various aspects of the story to us. For me the best part of these readings were his descriptions of his mum, whom he painted lovingly, and also the bleak times when he was using heroin and whatever else he could inhale or smoke or inject to get himself high. There was a great description of chroming, which was really very unique, because literate people don’t get high that way and cannot plausibly write about it. He said that the aim was always obliteration: the forgetting of who you are, and eventually the total destruction of the grey matter that causes you suffering in the first place.

Sometimes Jim would allow our discussions to veer away from his comfort zone. He would listen to our gossip about other lawyers and judges and magistrates, and he would be outraged when he heard some of those stories and say things like: You see the thin veil of your justice. You see why it can't be trusted.

There was room for trivia, too, and the usual talk that people engage in. Jim and I would talk about Elle and Jane and grumble a bit just for show, and there was still a bit of mystery surrounding Bernard and his unusual love life. He spent so much time with Ruthie that everyone presumed he was her boyfriend, and when we asked about that he said that he enjoyed spending time with her and especially taking her out, because every man he met was envious of his beautiful and graceful companion. He also told us that she lived at a slightly odd angle to the world, and that it made her very unique and refreshing company. She surprises me, he told us. The things she sees, the things she knows. There are not many people who surprise me anymore, I can guarantee you that.

Jane had told me that Bernard was probably gay, and I eventually asked him point blank and he just said: that isn’t relevant, Nate. I wheedled some more, and he blocked me for a while, and then he sighed and told me that he was essentially asexual. I said that no one is asexual, and he told me I was a plain bigot and that I should look it up sometime. I did look it up, and sure enough there were a few articles on the net about it. Some labelled it a kind of neurosis, but others were prepared to accept it as a normal variation of human sexuality. I asked him whether he had ever had sex and he said: now you are just being puerile. I thought I should bring the subject up with Ruth but I could not bring myself to broach it, and in the end I suppose I took a leaf out of Bernard’s book and I just left them to work it out between themselves without prying or being puerile. And from the outside at least they both seem to be incredibly happy with one other, with the strange and wonderful intimacy that they have created between themselves.

Jane and I were also very good together, very easy and close, and we always treated each other well. After we had been together a year her lease ran out, and I asked her to move in to our place. I expected a certain yes but instead she said no, insisting that that she would only move in with me if we were going to be forever. I got a bit pissy about that, and I pulled back for a while, until Bernard walked into my office one day and closed the door and said something like: Nate. I know you aren’t stupid, and I don’t think you’re crazy. Are you going to let her go? I told him what had happened and he said: a woman like that says forever, and you get shitty about it. He shook his head and told me: whatever that is, Nate, it is time to get over it.

He was dead right of course. I confronted my conscience and I saw I had been stupid, and I wrote a sincere apology to Jane telling her that I loved her, and that I wanted nothing more than to be with her forever. I took Ruthie out the next weekend to find an engagement ring, and after a few false starts with fantastically expensive diamonds, Ruthie pointed out a lovely clear aquamarine set in white gold with tiny diamonds. Even though I knew it was the right one I still got an assurance of exchange from the saccharine-sweet sales lady, and I paid and we walked away with a tiny box, with Ruthie totally beside herself with excitement and a pretty good risk of blabbing about it. I told her that I was thinking of asking Jane in a plush restaurant where we had been on our first real date, but Ruthie told me that I should ask her on the beach, so that if she said no I could go for a swim to cool off. I feigned hurt at the suggestion that Jane might refuse, and Ruthie reassured me that with such a beautiful ring nobody would ever turn me down.

The following day I drove Jane and Ruth down the peninsula, and with winks and giggles I asked Ruthie to stay in the car for a bit, and she actually squeaked with the effort of containing such an enormous secret. Jane gasped when I knelt down and showed her the ring and she said: are you serious? And I said I am serious, I have never been more so, and she said that she would love to marry me, and only really wondered why I had taken so long to ask her. I asked her to wait while I got Ruthie from the car, and she danced around singing and nearly crushed Jane with hugs and went through two rolls of film trying to get the perfect angle of me and Jane re-enacting our proposal.

When Ruthie was off getting an ice cream I told Jane I hoped she didn’t mind that there were three of us on such a special day, and she said that she didn’t mind at all. And she also said something like: I love the way you are with her. You’re so warm and kind, and you show me the same regard. You are the sort of man I was always hoping for, but didn’t really hope to find. And she turned to me and gave me a deep kiss and any reservations I might have had just melted away, and I too wondered what had taken me so long to ask this woman to be my wife.

***

Jane and I were married after a quick engagement. After I had proposed my only reason to wait was to reassure her parents, but they were almost as eager as we were. They knew Jane was a smart girl, and as they both told us: when you know, you just know. The fact that her dad was an old Xav probably helped us quite a bit, especially as he had also run a bit in his day.

So it was. We were married in the Edinburgh gardens, and we had a wonderful buffet lunch under some white canvas awnings amongst the trees. I had Bernard and Jim as my groomsmen, and for a while there was a bit of confusion about which side Ruthie should stand on. She ended up deciding that she wanted to be a bridesmaid, but she also wanted to be the one to look after the ring. This slightly mottled arrangement hung together and soon we were married, and our guests were drinking themselves into an extreme state of refreshment. Elle sang for us, with a bassist and a piano, and for once she seemed to be just enjoying herself and the music she was making, rather than pouting and flipping her hands around and flirting with the whole of the congregation.

As the afternoon wore on the sky darkened, and when the air cooled suddenly and ominously Bernard got on to the microphone and directed people back to our place. I protested that we had no food or drink but he smiled and hushed me and told me that I would find everything in order. When we got home we were met by starched young wait staff in aprons and ties, with drinks on ice and finger food and even a little PA in the corner so that we did not blow our speakers. As the skies opened up the last of the guests cantered down the street to the shelter of our house, and with music and food and wine and the guests all pressed together the celebrations really got going. We danced cramped close in the kitchen, and Jane went and changed and appeared in short black dress that was little more than a slip, and she looked so hot and so cool that I actually gasped to see her, and at the fact that she was somehow now my wife.

There were speeches, relatively brief, and Jane made a very funny one in praise of her and me. She speculated upon what had drawn us together, and she told the crowd that everyone should endeavour to intermarry and have children of mixed race, so that nobody could be racist anymore. To our black and white babies, she said. Like penguins! Said Ruthie. Everyone laughed, and Jane raised her glass to Ruth. To our little penguins! And the music was pumped up again, and everyone started to dance and move with whatever rhythm they had, and in what little room they could find, and the celebrations became so complete that nothing else mattered anymore.

The only sour note concerned Jim. When he got back to our house he was good and hosed, and he leaned against the kitchen bench glaring darkly at Elle as she flirted and danced with the flash young barristers that Jane had invited. He drank himself further down, into real dirty drunk, and at one stage Bernard came up to me and warned me that things might get ugly pretty soon. There was one guy that Elle kept returning to, and he was stupid and careless like an overgrown boy, and when he eventually leaned in to kiss Elle, well that was the end of that. Jim lunged for him but Bernard was watching, and he got between the two of them before any punches could land. He faced Jim and held up his hands, and Jim let fly with some abuse and then told us that we could all go and fuck ourselves. Bernard followed him as he staggered down the hall and out into the street, and he snatched up an umbrella and walked Jim home and put him to bed. Meanwhile Elle got on with the job of flirting with every single man in the room, although she knew by then that she should not try it on with me.

It could have been very ugly, but as it was the guests just giggled and went back to dancing and carousing. Ruthie was worried about Bernard but he was back in a short while, and he told us that Jim was in bed and that everything was fine. The night wore on with dancing and plastered conversation and one visit from the police about the noise. At the end there was a bunch of drunken baby barristers jostling for room on the couch, crying out for more wine, and when I pulled out a few bottles they cheered, and they cheered louder when I told them that the bride and groom were off to bed. Most were still there in the morning, rough as guts, a few draped asleep in strange postures across the couches and the floor.

When Jane and I went to bed she asked me whether I wanted to re-enact our first night together. I stroked her hair and said: if you do. She laughed and said: the fuck I do. And so we had our wedding night, and even though it only comes once it came with a strange and great reassurance to me that all need of haste or urgency was ended. As we clinched and moved upon one another that quiet thought came into my head, and I turned languid and slow, and she moved in that way too, feeling the time we had ahead of us now, and the constancy that we had promised one another. I suppose we really became husband and wife, in that moment of reassurance, and when we woke to our bombsite of a house we stood with each other and looked at it together, and as we laughed with our sore heads I knew that this was what everyone was so crazy for, and I knew without doubt that I had made the best decision of my life, when I finally plucked up the courage to ask this woman to marry me.

***

The house was a tip but there was no real damage and we cleaned it in half a day. Jane’s barrister mates helped, looking very second-hand, and Jim even came up to help with the bottles. He told me that he wanted to apologise, especially to Jane, but I told him that everyone had been drinking and there was nothing to apologise for. Still he did the right thing and said sorry, and Jane hugged him and thanked him and got him a Berocca. Jim also asked after Elle, saying that she had not come home, and I thought hard and told him honestly that I could not remember seeing her leave. The boy who tried to kiss her was also gone, but I thought I had best leave that part of it alone.

Elle eventually came home, with some rank excuse about where she had been. Jim apologised but the relationship now had a terrible sickness and it was not very long for this world. Jim would come to our Friday sessions more and more consumed with complaints about Elle, and they were soon about more than just her flirting and dancing with some random guy. He found a letter that she was writing to a man from over the other side of the country, and when he confronted her she told him it was someone she had been on and off with during university, now just a cherished friend. Jim refused to believe it and he demanded to see all of their correspondence. Elle told him to fuck off but he trashed her desk and her papers and found half a dozen letters from him on pretentious hand-made paper, along with a sheaf of his love poems. He then broke into her computer and printed out her whole email account, and with Elle screaming threats at him he went straight down to the State Library to read and re-read the words that he had found.

They made for bad reading. Her letters especially, filled as they were with expressions of love and longing. They cut Jim very badly, and he underlined all of the incriminating passages, and then he brought the whole mess down to Bernard and me that same afternoon. As we read he was really pacey and he was full of threatening words, and I told him he should stay with us at Drummond Street for a couple of days just so that he could cool off. He refused that offer, shouting that he was not going to be made a stranger in his own home. Bernard offered to mediate between him and Elle and Jim reluctantly agreed to that, but when Berns rang her she refused the offer and told him that the relationship was over. She also said that the police had paid a visit, and that Jim should stay away.

Bernard and Jim ended up at our place, with Jim still very wound up, but I had told him that he had to behave himself around Jane and Ruthie and he was able to control most of his anger. We had some dinner, and then we sat down to a glass of dessert wine and figured out what we should do.

Jane took the lead, which I was thankful for, because Jim had stopped listening to me. She was direct without being brutal, and she told Jim that he would have to swallow some of his pride if he wanted to continue his relationship with Elle. She said that she was prepared to go there with him the next morning, and try to patch things up, and Jim agreed to go with her and to keep his cool as well.

They went down to the house the next day, and Jane knocked on the door while Jim waited out on the street. He was hopeful, but when Elle answered the door she was anything but conciliatory. She said that she was sick of Jim and his desire to control her, and she also said that she wanted no further contact with him. Jim began to swear at her, and although Jane tried to calm him he stood there and screamed vile curses at Elle until one of the neighbours came out and threatened to call the police. Jane got him back to our place with some effort, and I have to say that I wasn’t at all surprised when I heard what had happened. The split seemed bound to stick, and Jim eventually shambled into his bedroom and shut the door behind him. I told Jane that we might have to look after Jim for a while, and she said that it might be a very long while, but that he must not go back there no matter for what reason.

Jim stayed with us for a couple of days, and he seemed to be going quite well, all things considered. Then for some reason he decided to go back home: to get himself some work clothes, or so he said. He wandered back down the road, perhaps hoping that he and Elle would make up, but he was bitterly disappointed when he arrived. When he tried his key in the door the lock wouldn’t turn, and as he jiggled it he realised that she must have changed the locks. He flew into a rage and began bashing on the door, yelling at Elle to let him in.

Eventually the door was opened by a tall handsome man in a dressing gown. He smiled benignly but Jim was in no mood for politeness and he asked him who the fuck he was. The man introduced himself as Elliott, and Jim snarled and called him names and threatened to cut off his balls and whatever else.

Now Elliott is a big boy, and he is full of himself as well, and so he just laughed at Jim and his threats and told him to piss off back to Africa. Jim stood his ground and Elliott came down the steps towards him, but when he was halfway down Jim got past him and turned him around. Although Jim was not overly fit he was still very fast with his hands, and from the top step he unleashed a flurry of punches directly into Elliott’s face and the side of his head. Elliott went down like a sack of shit and lay sprawled at the foot of the steps, crying and moaning with his hands clasped over his face, with Jim dancing over him and screaming at him to get up and fight.

Elle then ran screeching out of the house and Jim grabbed her by the hair and forced her to look at this amazing Elliott. She screamed louder as Jim laid his boots into him a few times, and then went inside the house to get the things he had come for. He lingered there and smashed a few things and by the time he was out again the police had arrived. They pointed their weapons at him as he yelled at them from the porch, daring them to shoot him. I would bet they came pretty close, especially when he started to advance down the steps towards them, but then he grinned and put his hands on his head and they eventually got him down on to the ground. He was still yelling abuse at Elliott and Elle as the wagon took him away.

I heard this story from Jane, who went down to get Jim out of the lockup. We thought a white woman would be most likely to get him out of there, and eventually she did, after fast-talking the police into seeing things her way. They let him go, but they also told him that he would be charged with assault and trespass, and the sergeant warned him not to go back to the house. Jim protested that that it was his own house, but the sergeant shrugged and said something like: We saw your handiwork today, Mr Farmer. So here’s the way it is. Don’t go near the house. We won’t let you out of here next time you go back there. And you don’t want to give us any more excuses to shoot you.

***

Jim was eventually prosecuted for the assault on Elliott, but we successfully challenged the exaggerated medical evidence that a doctor friend of Elle had given. Jim stayed out of jail, but he became the subject of strict intervention orders that were granted on an interim basis and then made permanent. Elle also brought Family Court proceedings, complete with irrelevant but juicy accusations of cruelty and overt physical and sexual abuse. I do not know the truth of those allegations, but I do know that if you throw enough shit it will stick, and Jim ended up doing very badly out of the whole fucking disaster.

Jim stayed with us during those proceedings and then for a good while afterwards. He stewed and fumed and after a while his outrage turned to a slow burn of absolute certainty that his race was the chief cause of his misfortune. We wanted to retain good counsel for him in the family court proceedings and I was prepared to stump up the money, but he increasingly saw an inevitability about his fate and he decided to stand up in court and fight those battles himself. Like most litigants in person he did a really poor job, and as he went down he would gesture and threaten and ask: how much of this is because I am an Abo? He was cautioned again and again to conduct himself appropriately, but he just kept acting up until eventually he was excluded from court and they decided the matter in his absence.

***

The whole thing was a total disaster, and it left Jim lonely and poor and with nothing much left in his life. Jane worried that he might go back to heroin, and Bernard worried about self-harm, but as it turned out it was good old alcohol that proved to be his undoing. He would come home stinking of it, and one weekend he worked his way through two slabs, one for each day, sitting alone out on the front steps surrounded by empty cans. Jane told me quietly but firmly that she did not want that in her home, so I told Jim he would have to wind it up a bit, especially around our place, and from that time on we rarely saw him. I heard that he was sleeping in his office at work and one Friday he turned up to afternoon drinks totally messed up, dressed in crumpled and stinking clothes with his eyes hanging out of his head. He told us that the faculty had issued him with a warning for teaching class while intoxicated, and he laughed and said something like: they just don’t like me telling it like it is.

He was sacked exactly one week later. He fronted up to drinks and told me he was gone, and although it was late I made some calls to see if I could get him a reprieve. The Dean listened to me very politely, and then he sighed and told me that Jim had urinated in a lecture theatre in the middle of a class, and then gone on to shout about how white people were inhuman and needed to be exterminated. Security had removed him and then cleared out his office, and the Dean told me with genuine sadness that although he knew Jim was suffering this behaviour was intolerable. He also said that I was welcome to come and pick up his things.

I knew that the Dean could hear Jim in the background yelling abuse but he really was very fair about it. He told me that he regretted what had happened, and that Jim had a very good mind. He also made a standing offer to return Jim to his post if he cleaned himself up. I thanked him for that and he said something like: let me know if he recovers, and I’ll do what I can to get him back in here again.

When I put the phone down Jim sneered at me and said: you didn’t argue very hard. I got angry with him then, like I have hardly ever been, and I told him that I would ring the Dean back just as soon as I could find a way to justify pissing and then preaching race hatred in class. Jim just giggled, and held up his hands in mock fear of me, and right at that moment I felt very weary of him, and I pointed to the door and told him: get out of my fucking office. He paused and said: can I take that bottle? I knew he would take it no matter what I said so I told him to take it and to drink himself to death with it.

It got a bit nasty. He told me in a snide tone that I was a marvellous man, and that he had no idea why people said all those terrible things about me. I warned him not to come home drunk, and he said that he was long gone already. He took a swig and pointed at me, saying: I bet Jane would still let me in. She has this thing for blackfellas, you see. He took another big swig from the bottle, bowed drunkenly to me, and then lurched through the waiting area and out on to the street.

***

That was the last I saw of Jim for a long time. I had no idea what had become of him, and I was of course worried, but he had been so vile that I had no interest in seeing him unless he cleaned himself up. I also knew that I was responsible now for Jane as well as Ruthie, and that I could not expose them to this kind of ugliness and abuse. I increasingly thought that Jim might have met with some unfortunate end, but just as sure as he was reckless and drunken he was also a very hard man, and I guessed he would re-appear eventually, with more to tell us about where he had been and what trouble he had gotten himself into.

***

In the intervening time Mary briefly re-appeared. I should probably give at least some account of that, although truthfully there is not a great deal to tell. I must have mostly forgotten her, or archived her in my memory, so it was a shock to pick up the phone one day to have her there on the other end asking to speak to me. I was dumb and asked who was calling, just as my memory flared and her name came to me as she spoke it down the line.

She was pleasant enough, and she said that she would like to meet me for lunch. We made a time and she was waiting out the front of the restaurant when I got there, huddled against the wind. I put a hand on her arm and kissed her awkwardly on the cheek. She felt much bonier than I remembered, her small frame wired up with tension, and there was also a slight tremor in her when I touched her, or so I thought.

We went inside and sat down and she looked around nervously, and when she smiled it seemed a wan memory of the way she used to smile. I filled in the silence with news of what I had been up to, and I told her about Jim and his rise and fall and she said in this flip, hard tone: wellity well well. Whoever would have thought?

I told her before she asked that I was married, to get that out of the way, and although she congratulated me I saw her contract quietly into herself. I suppose I must have enjoyed that a little, after the way she had treated me, but mostly I saw how diminished she was, and I actually felt sorry for her, and also quietly grateful for where my life was now.

The rest of lunch was awkward. I had ordered a bottle of wine and Mary kept gulping at her glass, and as the waiter quietly topped it up for her she raised no complaint. When our meals were finished I asked about coffee, and Mary ordered a liqueur coffee with no cream and she bolted that down too. She became very terse and eventually I stopped making much of an effort, and we were mostly silent from that point onwards. I could have asked her about London but frankly I didn’t care to know, and I also avoided questions about whom she might be seeing because they were pointless, out-dated questions to ask. I did ask whether she was working or studying and she said working but she wouldn’t tell me what she did.

At the end of the meal I fixed up the bill, and she smiled a crooked drunk smile and said thanks. We walked outside into the clear and windy day, and she took my arm and leaned her head against my shoulder like she used to do, and although I should have stopped her I just let her lean there as she hid her face from the wind. She asked me whether I remembered the time that Jim got clean with us, and I said that I did, very clearly, and she said: Nate I need to know. Would you do the same for me?

I pulled back and looked at her. She was so tiny, and now I saw more clearly what it was that assailed her. Do you mean now? I asked. She shook her head and said: it is probably better for now, the way things are. But maybe down the line, maybe a couple of months.

I thought and I told her that if it were just me I would say yes in an instant, but I had other people in my life to think about. She said she would be no trouble but I said again that it was not just about me, and that I would need to ask Ruthie and especially Jane about it. Mary smiled and then her old voice came out of her, saying that she understood, and she laughed an almost normal laugh and said: if I were Jane there’s no fucking way I would let me in the house.

I changed the subject then, trying to cadge some more information from Mary about the trouble that she was in, but she was evasive and told me just that it was prescription meds of some sort. She told me that she would flush her stash from time to time, and then go straight out and get herself some more. Not if they were still in the bowl though. She pulled her face into a hard grin and said: even if someone had pissed on them, I would still put then down my neck. I asked her how she was financing all this and she said she would rather not tell me. I said I was in no position to judge her but she said something cryptic about not sullying my memory of her and that there were things that people ought to keep to themselves, especially where they had got themselves into trouble with absolutely no help from anyone.

That was pretty much it. I was curious, of course, and I badly wanted to ask her about old things but I thought of Jane, and I knew that such things were just dead memories, and that there was nothing but maudlin curiosity in my desire to dredge them up. And although things might have been different they were not different, and the way that things are, the way things actually happened, is all that really matters.

We stood there silently, the wind whipping around us, and she shivered a bony shiver and said that she had drunk too much, and she thanked me again for the wine. No problemo, I said. I told her I should go and she said of course and I thrust out my hand to her but she just clasped it and drew me close and kissed me a lingering kiss on the cheek. I suppose some memory of our old desire was there, but she felt different to how I remembered her, and there was nothing like the torrent of desire that used to sieze me when I touched her. I said goodbye and told her to call if she wanted our help, and she smiled strainedly and said: So you are part of an Our now. Well good for you, Mr Kenny.

I gave her a thumbs up for some reason, and then I turned away from her, and I did not look back at her at all as I walked up the hill towards the office. Whether she stood there looking after me, or whether she also turned quickly and walked back towards her life, I would honestly have no idea.

***

That evening before dinner I told Jane about my lunch with Mary. She raised her eyebrows at me in mock accusation and folded her arms, and only stopped dicking around when I told her about the possible drug problem, the fact that she might need our help. She can come here if she wants, said Jane. She is welcome. But until she chooses that wholeheartedly it would be pointless. She also said that dragging her into detox would be about as useful as roping an iceberg, and I told her that Mary had seemed to understand that fact pretty well. I told Jane that she seemed sad and diminished since I last saw her, and Jane said: that’s because she lost you, fella. But her loss was my gain. I smiled and said I was glad she realised what a catch I was, and she said Prize Fucking Marlin you are. But she moved in to kiss me, too, and as callous as it sounds that was enough to banish any thoughts of Mary from my mind.

***

I have not seen Mary since that time. It was also a long time before I saw Jim again, and though I spared him more of my thoughts than I did Mary I probably could have done more to get in touch with him, or find out where he was.

There was one time I had a bit of a hint. Elle called me to say that someone had thrown half a brick through her front window, and she demanded to know where Jim was so that she could turn him into the police. I told her that he had disappeared, and she said: he better fucking disappear. The police called around to our place that night to ask me some questions, and I was straight up and I told then that I had no idea where Jim was. I also told them that there may be other people motivated to do such things to Elle, and they eyed me suspiciously and demanded to know who those people were. I told them all I meant was that Jim may not have been the vandal, but they told me to leave the police work to them, and to concentrate on putting criminals back on the streets. I told them that I would do just that, and I abruptly showed them the door.

Elle eventually called back with a saccharine apology for her tone, as she called it, and she invited me and Jane around for dinner. She neglected to invite Ruthie but when I mentioned that she said: of course, that darling girl is welcome to come too. We went over one Thursday evening, and Elliott simpered to us in his oily way, and he spoke loudly to Ruthie until Jane told him quietly that she was not deaf. I was upset until Elliott made a grand show of pouring some expensive wine he had bought, and Ruthie deftly pronounced it, word for word: a tolerable picnic wine. Jane and I laughed despite our best efforts, and even Elle tittered a little before Elliott glared at her and then turned haughtily away.

That whole night Elliott was just unbearable. His best effort was referring to Jim as Jimmy Blacksmith, until Jane again intervened and told him that this was a racist and offensive nickname. He laughed his slimy laugh and opined that political correctness was getting way out of control. He was such a fuckwit that even Elle seemed embarrassed by him by the end of the night, and I honestly felt like punching him by the time we were finished. I was secretly glad to see that despite all of the repair work his nose remained a little bit skewed, courtesy of Jim and his fast hands that day on the porch steps.

It was a long evening. When we eventually arrived home we debriefed, and even Ruthie thought that it had been an awful night. We resolved never to invite them to our place, rude though that might be, and also that we would make an excuse if we were ever invited there again. As it turned out we never were invited, which was probably the best outcome, although I would have been tempted to go again just to see Ruthie sweetly disparage another of Elliott’s expensive wines. Elliott was one slimy fucker, but even he had no rejoinder for that.

***

I eventually learned that Jim had headed back down to Gippsland, staying with some friends of his from the old days. I knew he was there because he called me once, pissed out of his skull, and he ended up abusing me for siding with Elle, finally telling me he was going to come and shoot me. I didn’t hear from him again for a good long while, but I do know that he started to go to AA meetings, pissed at first and then eventually sober. He did his Twelve Steps and called upon a higher power and then newly sober he fell in with some pentecostal christians, the type my dad used to call Happy Clappers. I got a long letter from him detailing his previous sins and shortfallings, and containing a lengthy apology to me and Jane and Ruthie and Bernard. He said he was re-born, and that he was praying for us to be re-born in the spirit as well. He said we were welcome to come worship at any point, and when Jane heard all of this she rolled her eyes and groaned and said: out of the fucking frying pan.

Jim had a taste for strong drink, even of a spiritual kind, and he ended up joining a Christian residential community in the remote hills up towards the Snowy Mountains. These guys were more than happy clappers. They were an explicitly apocalyptic cult with rigid social rules, and they prayed like the devil for the end of the world to come. They welcomed all who would join them but they spared them no extremity, and though Jim was welcomed he was welcomed as one of the children of Ham. He was given a Hebrew name that meant ebony, and thus black and hard, and if ever there was a true name for Jim they gave it to him without a shadow of a doubt. This hard black man lapped up their dire predictions for the end of the world, and with it so imminent he would have had them armed and ready, but they had a prediction about their own massacre at the hands of the unclean, and they aimed to put up no resistance. In any event they had given up even their hunting rifles, after the Waco calamity in the US.

So there Jim stayed and prayed for the end of the world, but as he read chapter and verse the story of the Hamites began to rankle with him, and also the fact that his brethren would field no question of it. It began to cut him as a racist myth, and he was told that a rebellious spirit was his inheritance from Ham, and his mind suddenly sharpened again and he began to rebuke them volubly for their stupidity, and their slavery to a perverted and racist Book. Within an hour four strong young men had marched him to the front gate and thrown him into the road, and told him to return when Satan had done with him, and he swore at them and threw stones and promised that he would return a long time before that.

Two nights later a terrible fire destroyed the cult’s dining house and reading room, and they remained in ashes for the best part of a year due to the prevalent view in that sect that insurance was close kin to gambling. I do not know whether it was Jim who incinerated these buildings, and I will not speculate upon it, but the possibility is not far from my mind. As he was later to explain to me, it only takes twenty minutes for a small fire of twigs to completely engulf a house. And in the night there would be no one to see the escape of a man made from ebony, angry and now vindicated and hard, hard like fucking nails. I wonder now whether Jim got a taste that night for the retribution that could be wrought upon people by the agency of fire.

We might have seen him then, because he had nowhere else to go, but Jim had developed a liking for life up in those mountains. He built a stick and tarp shelter close by a shady creek, and he stole a rifle and a few boxes of ammunition from a farm he had been staking out. It was a good heavy Winchester with a precision scope, and at dusk he would sight it across cleared land from the cover of the adjacent bush and bring down roos or deer that he would field-dress in the fading light. Occasionally he would take a sheep, if there was no other game, but he was careful with that resource because too many kills and farmers might come out looking for him. I don’t know whether he took any tips from his friends the PKK, but I suppose that he would sometimes watch proceedings at the Christian commune with an itchy trigger finger.

Game meat and water is no diet for a human being, and as Jim grew gaunt he began to worry about malnutrition. He would raid citrus trees at night and that probably kept his teeth from falling out, and he would steal bread and butter and biscuits from little farmlets and ravenously devour them where he stood. He tried not to take too much from anyone, so that nobody would realise he had been, but he would find the odd salami or block of cheese that he could not resist and steal the whole thing. He would leave some ammunition when he did that, as a means of payment, and he had no idea of the fear he must have caused people by this well-meaning and yet terrifying gesture.

And he was utterly alone. He suffered terrible pangs of loneliness and his past would not let him be, with constant accusations of having failed his mother, and at last his own wife who was now finished and done with him. He toyed more than once with the idea of turning the gun on himself and he never really made a decision about that one way or the other, although he began to see very clearly the way his mind was heading. Eventually he broke down and cried and could not stop, and when he did recover he decided to come back to the city and see about life again. He stole some plumbing pipe and grease and he interred his rifle in the ground, and he buried his ammunition in the same way, and he walked all the way back down from the hills to the river flats surrounding the nearest decent town, and with a stolen twenty dollar note he bought himself a roast dinner and a pint of beer at the local pub.

I know this story because the next thing he did was ring me, and I drove straight down to get him, despite the fact that it was getting late. He reeked a bit, a dirty human reek, and as we drove home with the windows open he threw up his roast dinner out the window without any warning.

This is madness, he said. Going this fast. He told me that in the bush time and distance still meant something, and that the colours in town made him quite disoriented. The bush asks you to make fine distinctions, he said. In the city the lights drive everyone insane.

I said very little in case I unsettled him. He had no one to talk to for the best part of a year, and he seemed pretty fragile and I did not want to make that any worse. When we got back to the house he stripped off on the front veranda and walked in his underwear to the bathroom. Hot water, he said. I forget what it feels like. He said it would ruin him and make him soft again and I told him that was probably a good thing. I got him some tracksuit pants and a long-sleeved top and I asked him what he wanted me to do with his other clothes and he said: put them in the bin. I did that and then made him a sandwich, but when I went to give it to him I found him passed out on the bed in his old room. I left it on his side table and went to bed myself. When I checked on him the next morning he was asleep on the polished wood floor, with just a folded blanket as a mattress. I took the stale sandwiches away and waited for him to wake up, but he wound up sleeping there for a really long time.

***

He was different, our Jim, and I think it was the bush that had made him so. When he spoke he would mostly avert his eyes, and he spoke softly and slowly and with great circularity, so that it was easy to forget the subject of your conversation when it was finally your turn to speak. At any question he would pause for so long that you would start to ask another one, and then he would give a tangential answer that always contained more detail than most people could make sense of. I asked him about it and after a long pause said: I dissipated myself before. But now I make myself a vessel for an indomitable spirit. Those words are his words, more or less verbatim. He also told me in his strange cadences that he would not sell himself again with cheap talk and gossip, that he would not sell himself with lies.

Jane was a bit worried about Jim’s new manifestation, and she asked me whether we should perhaps get him some professional help, as she politely called it. I told her that he would probably not agree to it, and that they would only treat him forcibly if he was a danger to himself or others. I was not as worried as Jane because I had seen Jim so much worse for wear. In fact I was starting to think that this was the first I had ever seen him sane.

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Firestick Farmer by P. Julian

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