AN OLD DEBT
AN OLD DEBT
By MALCOLM HILL
There’s one they call Dunnolly.
He sits with others wearing an old army overcoat outside the deserted Tavern.
The others are wary of Dunnolly. He stands off from them, kicking at the dirt. They know he is wound up tight as a golf ball; to approach him could set off an unraveling. At times he is taken up by purpose, but at others times he is the lowest of the species, twisting his arms around his head, snarling at benches and footpaths.
The rebels loathe each other yet cling desperately to each other’s company. At night they bunk down in the basement below the Tavern kept madly awake by rats and the fear of being robbed by one of their kind. Or that one of their brothers should depart and leave them on their own.
The morning light streams through the cracks in the Tavern walls. Hearing the footsteps of people walking past above, they call out,
“Got any coins, any bits of iron we can sell for scrap?”
“Got any work? We’re looking for work and a way to move on.”
There is one solace to their sadness. Without the others knowing, each one of them climb the stairs to pay a visit to the Old Widow who sits up on her huge wooden bed in her first floor Bedsitter in the block of Flats across the road. Her old black telephone sits beside her on her bedcover of frayed golden thread. A bowl of soup and a piece of dark bread often sit on a tray on the bedspread too. She will say, “I have just received a telephone call from a man who owes me money and he is coming here today”. She says he will bring her a pot of money because when he was a Nobody begging for scraps of food she helped him. “He was like you,” she says to make her point.
“Oh yes, him with the fine coat and the walking cane”. They hear him walking past the Tavern every morning. “He was one of my boys. His parents lived above the laundry. He started out with me.”
As the Widow talks she refers to a vast network of people on either side of the Law that spreads out across the City. She says, “That Tavern where you sleep was once up lit up like a Catherine wheel at night.” Her face brightens then sags as she coughs like a rattling back door hinge. “Get me a drink.”
The Rebel at the end of the bed scuttles into the kitchenette to look for a glass. “Under the sink, Lughead,” she calls out.
The Widow coughs and squawks. She whets Dunnolly’s appetite with stories of gangsterdom and vice. The retellings become scratchy.
“Georgy we called him. Our cabbie for Northern Suburban Taxis. He made the deliveries and drove the girls to the jobs. He had curly hair. Quite a ladies man, Georgy.”
She becomes maudlin. “Now leave me alone” she orders.
Dunnolly presses the Widow for more details.
“That’s when things got rotten. That’s why they call me the Widow, cos Georgy disappeared.”
“I’ll go find Georgy. I can pay him a visit,” he says.
“Ivan was pushy like you. He came after Georgy left. I told him, no, we’re too old now”.
Dunnolly tells the Widow that he is the only one of the Rebels able to make such a journey.
She pulls the tatty quilt up and wipes a solitary tear from her eye.
Dunnolly considers the Widows story. He could see why her old boyfriend took off.
Dunnolly places a cardboard box of creamy cakes on the bedspread. The Widow tucks into the cakes like an old tabby cat, leaving blotches of cream among the wiry black hairs at the corner of her mouth. Content, her eyelids droop and her bottom lip rolls outward. A snore escapes.
Dunnolly searches her room. Under the bed there is nothing except an old bedpan. Dunnolly reels back at the acrid stench and bumps his head on the bottom of the bed. The rest of the room seems to laugh smugly at his ferreting, only revealing frayed slippers, old electricity bills soaked in grease, worthless trinkets, rusted lockets.
One day Dunnolly climbs the stairs to find the Widow’s big bed vacant. She is sitting in the Kitchenette, her hair spread out before her like a black knotty fan on the small table. Dunnolly is embarrassed to see the Widow’s hair out of its bun. She sobs,
“Alright. Go if you must. Here is the address and some money. Leave me here alone with my reputation - a deserted woman who calls herself a Widow”.
Dunnolly thinks the old bird is mistaking him for one of her old boyfriends.
She instructs him sternly, “Remember, George is not to be trusted. You will set out at dawn. If you are not back by the end of the day I know you will have run off or that they have got hold of you. I will pay you when you return. Don’t worry your wretched head. I’ll give you some money to get you through the day.”
That night Dunnolly cannot sleep. He hears the breathing of the other men sleeping under their old army blankets. His mind is racing, seeing himself marching across a suburban parkland toward some grand houses. I will play a part. I will have respect. He is the leader of a platoon who has garrisoned a grand house and he is informing the rich owners that they are surrounded and to vacate.
Eventually the Sun begins to shine through the cracks of the tavern and Dunnolly springs into action. He grasps the scrap of paper with the address roughly in his fist.
Dunnolly sets out across the Girder Bridge that separates the old part of town with other parts of the City.
After an hour or more of tramping Dunnolly comes to a shopping strip. It is deserted but the terrace shops cast a cooling shadow. Dunnolly catches his breath. He is expecting to exchange greetings with new people. But no one’s around .The shopping strip is lifeless, save for rubbish scraps stirring around in pockets of wind.
Not being exactly sure where he is, he continues on this road. The houses and commercial buildings soon fall away, the road widens now with spartan infrastructure set well back.
As the sun climbs overhead, his shadow shortens and he is now encased in sweat; he sees a light ahead. It‘s a building. It‘s a petrol station.
Dunnolly enters the petrol station, face red, hair matted like straw.
Dunnolly, stands in the doorway. There is a high pitched buzzing sound. The Attendant behind the counter says.
“Either come in or get out. You’re standing on it”
“There's no petrol. See.” says the attendant, looking back over Dunnolly’s shoulder.
The petrol bowers are covered over by old sacks, a sign painted on a piece of wood, ‘No Fuel Today’.
“Where’s your car?”
“No car today”
“You walk?”
“Yeah”
“Where from?”
“The Old Town.”
You walked all that way this morning?”
Yep.” says Dunnolly.
The Attendant changes tack.
“You looking for work?”
“Maybe”
“There’s no work around here but I might be able to fix you up with something”
Dunnolly is torn. He’s got his mission but is also looking for a way to never return to the old Tavern.
“I gotta deliver something”.
“What?”
“It’s private”.
“Where?”
“The Northern Suburbs”.
“Who to?”
“Can’t say”.
The Attendant tightens his brow.
“What is your job exactly?”
“Deliveries”.
“You’re not carrying anything”.
“It’s a message”.
“What’s the message?”
“Can’t say”.
“You coming back with something?”
“Depends how things pan out”.
The attendant refocuses. Here stands a grifter, a casual laborer.
“You coming back this way?”
“Don’t get me wrong cobber, I’m lookin’ for work. But I gotta make my run first.
“Who you delivering too?”
“A taxi driver”
“I know all the driver’s. What name?”
“You wouldn’t know”
“Try me”.
“George”.
“George, which George?”
“Georgie”.
The Attendant is now keen to please.
“What’s the address? Tell me the address and I’ll tell you how to get there.”
Dunnolly pulls out the scrap of paper.
The Attendant says “Not bad. You’re off track but you can still get back if you head across to the main highway.”
He heads out the door. The Attendant follows him.
He watches Dunnolly stride out onto the road, his broad shoulders pumping mechanically, now with a new sense of purpose.
The Attendant was impressed thought Dunnolly. He hadn’t known how he would be received on the other side of the Bridge. He feels he has passed his first encounter successfully and that gives him a new confidence he has not been near on all those frosty mornings begging outside the old Tavern.
******************
Dunnolly looks up and sees a wide intersection. Thick black powerlines hang low above red and blue flashing lights; a tow truck and ambulance parked the wrong way up on the dividing strip.
As he approaches he can hear a radio crackling. Dunnolly sees the smashed car and the family in it, the machine crushed, flattened and twisted. There is a small boy trapped inside.
Hey you!” says a man as Dunnolly approaches.
“Give us a hand”.
He is a tow truck driver in a dirty cap and hands Dunnolly some big gloves. He points to the warped chrome steel that is caging the boy. Together they exert their body strengths in opposite directions to try and prise the metal apart so they can free the kid.
Dunnolly leans into the bent cabin; the flame leaps up, voraciously licking the car body and the emergency services worker jumps back. Dunnolly remains with his head over his task, his temples straining.
Smoke envelops Dunnolly as with two gloved hands he lifts the child clear of the flame. The emergency worker watches him standing within the wreck like a stem inside a flower of flame.
Dunnolly dusts off the cinders, sweating heavily, eyes jumping around in their sockets, jaw jutting out, nursing a child. An awe struck ambulance officer carefully takes the child and places it in the back of an ambulance.
The tow truck driver is hooking up the car wreck to his tow truck
“Where you heading? You wanna lift?”
Dunnolly nods indicates with his thumb, “up north”
“Hop in.”
In the cabin the radio spits static. Dunnolly does not recognise the areas they pass.
“What are you doin'? You lookin’ for work? We could definitely find a job for a fella like you.”
The truck enters an auto wrecker’s yard and parks next to a flimsy building with car wrecks all around. The driver yanks the hand brake up and opens his door.
The driver goes into the office and talks to a man.
The man in the plywood office is old, wears horn rim glasses and a striped cardigan. The office has posters of cars, footballers, take away food and naked women draped over cars stuck up on the wall. The man looks out the window in the direction of Dunnolly.
The driver comes back after talking to the old man. “There’s a job there if you want it. You could ride jockey with me tonight if you’d like”.
Dunnolly says, “Can’t now. I’m looking for this address”.
Shows him the piece of paper.
“Oh that’s just over the highway. All you gotta do is cross the highway and you’re there.”
Dunnolly sets off, making his way past all the wrecks in the yard. There is no end to them. He looks back once and sees the driver and the old man. The old man is waving his arms around and pointing in Dunnolly’s direction.
Dunnolly feels the sun. It’s approaching mid afternoon. He pushes up an embankment through sharp thorny bushes as he makes it up onto the edge of the highway.
Cars whistles past at frightening speed. He catches half shouts and abuse or thumping music as the metal shells catapult through the air. Voices whip by in the wind,”What are you doin' out here Ragamuffin!!”
Dunnolly must press on. He never finishes anything. He always walks away from jobs. Even when he was a kid building a billy cart he’d crack the shits and walk off leaving it wheeless in the backyard. He was once considered a craftsman of some skill but his few supporters tired of waiting for the finished product. They said they would show a table to others on his behalf but without something solid to talk about they could do little. They drifted away too. He couldn’t hang on to friendships. They were there, then less there, then gone, until he found himself in a boarding house with men he didn’t know. Process servers for unpaid bills were always chasing him. He got awful mad when he thought of these unfinished things. I’ll show them, he said to himself.
Don’t take me lightly. He would thrash around on the floor of the tavern at night muttering at the thought of being taken lightly. Shut up, the other hobos would call out. He would sneak up to the street level so he didn’t have to sleep with the others in the basement, the Brothers of Despair as he called them.
That’s why he pestered the Widow. She could see he had the energy and smarts. That he was a different class of person who just happened to be passing through a shabby time. They had connected hadn’t they? He had felt solid when they were discussing the terms of his job. That was pleasing. He responded to responsibility, if only people could see that. He liked this kind of work - out on the road, no one breathing down his neck. I like this capitalist world he thought. There’s a bit of capitalist in me. Surprising isn’t it. I bet you thought I’d be a red hot communist he debated himself delightedly. Well no, I mean sure, all I’m saying is, I like enterprise and I feel I’ve got an untapped natural talent for it.
If he can finish this job perhaps there will be more jobs; pick ups, deliveries. He knows the area to the north now. He had shown initiative with the console operator. He didn’t know if he’d go back that way. Depends how his cards fell. Come to think of it he wasn’t sure exactly how to get there from here, now that he had accepted a lift with the tow truck driver.
He is now close to his delivery address. He makes a dash across the multi lane highway.
A car nearly runs him down as he makes the gravel siding on the far side of the road. He gives it the finger. The jalopy suddenly brakes and massive cloud of dust is thrown up. Out of the cloud the reversing jalopy heads back straight at Dunnolly. Dunnolly stands rooted to the spot.
The Hoons jump out of the car and swarm upon him. He tries to flee down the embankment. The three hoons and Dunnolly become attached and become a many limbed animal tumbling down the dirt of the embankment, flailing elbows and knee joints hit the bottom together and split apart.
The Hoons weigh in with boots, then flee, crawling back up onto the road and to their jalopy. The figure of Dunnolly does not move for some time. Dunnolly is programmed from nights sleeping in the basement of the tavern when drunken city workers on their way home after a night in the old town break into the tavern to give the bums a kicking.
Dunnolly’s head is reverberating like a slammed prison door. He looks up. A teenage girl sitting on a bike is looking at him.
Dunnolly’s hair sticks out as if by electric shock, a trickle of blood finding a route down his deeply lined face. Like a creature from the bogs he’s black and filthy, blinking eyes the only softness.
He attempts to stand. The girl watches his attempt to rise from the dirt. An uncertain arm rises stiffly towards the girl, a scrunched bit of paper shaking in his claw.
The girl reads it and flicking her fringe back from her eyes, turns her bike around and pedals off.
Dunnolly tries to follow the girl as she pedals out of sight along a curved road with houses backing onto it. It‘s a housing estate, tall gums planted by design years ago. The road continues to curve and there is no sight of the girl.
Bloody kid’s having fun with me, Bugger it, I’ll find it myself; pulls out the smudged paper.
Rounding another curve in the road she is there, with teenagers and younger kids spread out across the road, the remains of a teenage birthday party. The girl honks her bicycle horn.
Dunnolly approaches, ”Anyone here called George?”
Instantly the kid’s crowd around, eager to help. Dunnolly is spun around, the small kids pulling at him, staring at his filthy clothes making him dizzy, as if he is the Clown hired for the party.
The girl says. “They’re not home. They went out before – to the pub.”
At the back of the houses two giant eucalyptus trees slowly moving left and right in the wind. The sun is lowering in the sky. Dunnolly has not seen two trees this large for a long time.
No front fence. A concrete step and a wire door. Kids toys lying around. He knocks on the wire door. The door’s off it hinges – did George do that?
“Who’s there?”
“I’m after George.”
“Not here.”
The voice appears from around the hallway corner, hair out, expressionless. She is dark haired.
“What you want?”
“Does George live here?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve got something to deliver to George”
“What?”
“A message," he adds, “I’m just the delivery man.”
A pause. They look into each other’s faces, the sun burnt and bruised delivery man and the middle aged Islander woman, tired of looking after a kids party all day.
“OK. I’m George’s missus. What is it?”
“Just a message.”
“You can tell me.”
“I’m meant to say it George.”
She shrugs, “You can wait here or go to the pub and look for them. They went off to the pub when the party started”
Dunnolly hesitates then asks,
“Can I get a glass of water? I’ve walked along way and there was an accident out on the highway….”
She cocks an eyebrow.
“Anybody hurt?”
“I don’t know. There was a little boy who survived I think but his parents were dead, that’s what I saw.”
Dunnolly leaves his report hanging in the air.
“There’s bad accidents on that freeway”, says Carol, “and sometimes the kids bring back bits and pieces.”
Dunnolly thinks of the young girl on the bike standing over him, the sun behind her.
Carol lets him in for the glass of water but makes Dunnolly stand at the entrance to the lounge as she fetches the glass.
He sees the house; messy. Birthday balloons and decorations hang off the wall, wrapping paper strewn on the floor and squashed party hats.
“You want some cake? It's Cindy’s birthday.”
She hands him a paper party plate with the glass of water.
Dunnolly shoves the cake in his mouth, crumbs bouncing down the front of his filthy T-shirt.
“Were you in the accident?”
“The girl brought me here.”
“You’ve got something to tell George hey?”
Dunnolly nods.
“He’s down the pub.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s a message.”
“Oh well you better tell him then. He’s the man for messages from roughed up strangers. They’re down the pub. I told them they better get their arses into gear and contribute to the rent.
He’s with Ivan. We said he could stay here for a while but he’s been here for a long time now. What’s he waiting for? You don’t know anything about that do you?”
Dunnolly sets off for the pub. Cindy follows on her bike. It is dusk now. He’ll have to hotfoot it to get back to the old City in time.
They approach the Main Drag. It’s a low slung part of town that slides off the highway with whiff of petrol fumes in the air. Cluttered windows are decorated in lace and colonial stylings with cardboard signs in Texta offering bland and ugly overpriced items. In the windows yesterday’s cheese and salad rolls to chew on tomorrow.
Dunnolly approaches the pub.
Dunnolly tells Cindy, “You wait outside.”
It’s an ordinary kind of pub. Opposite to the grand old houses he drank in, in his prime. There are few drinkers and he spots his quarry straight away. If this is George – he’s a small man. And if the chap whispering in his ear is Ivan, he’s older than he thought. This job is a doozy, thought Dunnolly.
Dunnolly sees they are both drunk having been in the pub all afternoon. Ivan is leaning into George.
“She’s peachy now..”
Georgie nods, eyes glazed.
“Too young,” says George,
“Old enough.”
Dunnolly sees Cindy outside through a window, shifting around on her bike.
“The debt has to be paid, wee George.”
“It’s been so long.”
“You knew the deal.”
“Yeah, but….”
“Or else there’ll be a car come pick up Carol and take her for that long drive like they shoulda done years ago.”
“Why don't they forget it?”
“They can’t.”
“Look, I want to talk to him.”
“You can’t George. He’ll put a bullet in your head the moment he sees you. For what you did to him.”
George stretches his arms out and grips the bar then pushes back. His head stares down at the pub carpet. He slowly swings each foot back and forth as he considers this.
“You can’t let her mother know….”
Dunnolly moves forward.
“Are you George, the taxi driver?”
The old men are surprised and give him a wary look.
“I’ve got a message for you”
George, “A message?”
“From the Widow.”
Ivan snorts, “I don’t believe it George. She’s sent another one.”
Ivan hunches his shoulders,“You want me take him outside and pick him to pieces? Then I can take the girl.”
Dunnolly adds,
“They’re knocking down the old Tavern.”
“They’re what?”
“They’re knocking down…”
“Yes I heard.”
George holds up his hand.
“I gotta think this through…”
He runs his tongue back and forth along his teeth.
Dunnolly looks out the window and sees Cindy trying to peer inside, wondering what is going on.
Dunnolly has heard enough.
He lurches forward and punches the old man Ivan in his ribs, so he slumps down into the ashtray that runs along the foot of the bar. He smacks Georgy in the eye, who staggers back. He boots Ivan with another kick.
Dunolly flees the bar.
“Come on!”
Cindy looks at Dunnolly, “What about my Mum?”
“We go get her.”
She rides her bike, he huffing and puffing beside.
They reach the house. Cindy says,
“There’s trouble. There was a fight at the pub. Ivan wants to take me away. We have to get out of here.”
Carol grapples with a coat asking what happened. Dunolly repeats what he heard in the pub. They head down the suburban street, walking and running. They cross a concreted sewer that takes them into scrubby parkland.
“This is the way,” says Cindy
Through the scrubby parkland they reach a concrete causeway.
They reach a nasty looking wire fence. Cindy says she’s done it before and takes a running jump at the fence clasping the wire netting with her hands, pulling herself up with the momentum of the jump, and hoiks herself over the top.
Dunnolly gives Carol a bunk up, Carol’s foot in his face so she can get over the top. Dunnolly clambers over, then falls awkwardly like a sack of spuds.
The scrubland becomes thicker and they can no longer walk in straight lines. The sun is now only reaching faintly into the scrub in thin ribbons of light. The scrubland is littered with rubbish.
Carol stops and asks,
“Is this the place where city wipes it's arse?”
Dunnolly says, “We’re probably running from the men who work for the old men. Men like me, looking for work. I know there’ll be fellas like that coming after us. You’ve got to believe me. If they say they are taking your daughter they won't stop until they find us."
“It’s not that shocking. I know what Georgy was in the past. And I never trusted that Ivan since he came to stay.”
Then Carol clams up, like she doesn’t want to talk in front of Cindy.
It is dark now.
“Lets stop here for a spell,” says Dunolly.
When they are resting, sitting in the dark, Carol says,
“I was always sweet on George, he gave me my start here. In those days he was a tough little nut.
He picked me up when I got here, fresh off the islands .We drove around. George was meant take me into the City but he didn’t. We went for a long drive out to a lake and sat there a long time. Then on the way back he went into a food store and used the phone then went home and barricaded up his house.
He always said the Widow would come after him and get what was hers. We forgot about it for years. Then this old guy Ivan turns up.”
After some sleep they set off. They follow what once was a creek but is concreted over.
After walking in silence Cindy calls out, “Come here! There’s a track here.”
”What’s this?” grunts Dunolly
The track emerges onto a suburban street, with sparsely spaced brown brick houses surrounded by weeds .
“We can get a bus here.”
She points to a solitary bus stop.
“No, we’re late. I’m late, “ says Dunnolly.
“I have to sit,” said Carol.
“Where does it go?” asks Dunnolly.
“Into town.”
Carol raises an eyebrow in her daughter’s direction. When has Cindy caught a bus into town without her knowing? Carol bunkers down into the bus shelter.
Dunnolly looks about, listening for distant sounds. He listens to the wind streaming through the trees.
“When’s this bus coming then?”
Dunnolly is dog tired. His boots are so heavy and he can hardly hold his head up.
Reluctantly he slumps into the bus shelter next to Carol.
After a while he is sleeping with Carol’s head resting on his shoulder.
Dunnolly wakes. The girl is calling out.
“ Wake up! It’s coming! ”
A bus is travelling along the street towards them.
The bus stops. Cindy eagerly waits for the door to open, calling to the two adults,
“Come on!”
Cindy talks to the bus driver, waving her bus pass, as Carol and Dunolly shuffle past and sit down.
They are the only passengers on the bus.
As the bus departs Cindy watches out the window. She sees three men climbing up on to the road from the embankment. They look like Dunnolly.
The bus hums and pulsates as it passes rows of houses, parklands, small clusters of shops.
Dunnolly is resigned to the fact that he is late and that he will probably not be paid by the Widow. He wonders if he should head back to the service station or the car yard. He looks at Cindy who is staring out the window.
The bus shifts gears down as it comes to a T intersection.
Cindy calls out,
“Look!”
The road they have arrived at runs along the top of a valley ridge. In the distance Dunolly can see the Girder Bridge and modern city buildings in the distance.
Dunnolly is on his last legs. Like a dying battery, his energy is drained from him.
As they cross the Girder Bridge he can see a light. The Old City is lit up. He smells the air: Fire.
They reach the old square. It’s the tavern. One more job for Dunnolly.
Fire is scribbling jaggedly across the entrance of the tavern, dark shapes of men staggering out. One more time Dunnolly throws himself into a wall of flame. In the basement he finds the dark shapes curled in corners. Dunnolly scoops them in his arms and carries them up the stairs, flaming timber falling about him, and onto the street.
Again and again he goes down into the basement of the tavern and brings out a blackened figure. When he can’t penetrate the wall of fire anymore he too flakes out onto the cobble stone smoking pouring off him like a burnt tree.
*****************************
POSTSCRIPT
“I am the one with the cane. I was an orphan. The old Widow took me under her wing. I worked for her since I was eight years old.
Now I am a lawyer in the new City. Every morning I walk past the remains of the old Tavern, where I worked as a boy. It is a wreck, like so much of the old city – run down - and taken over by squatters and gangs.
I damaged my leg running for the Widow. She wasn’t a Widow then. She was manager of the seedy Tavern. She was in partnership with a gangster. For a moment they were the City’s glamour couple. But the success of the place, due mainly to the arrival of soldiers stationed here during the war, made them greedy.
I was running errands for the Widow and her gangster boyfriend. He was really a glorified taxi driver. One morning I got my leg caught in a tram wheel as I crossed the road. I was fourteen then.
Every morning I pass the deserted tavern on my way to my legal practice in the City. I think one day the Old City will pick up again and burst into life like it did when I was a kid.
There is a lot of real estate potential in the Old City if the timing is right. In one way the Widow taught me good. Showed me how to run an enterprise. Yes I would like to see the old City with life in it again. But if the Widow hadn’t sent me out that morning with a message for her taxi driver boyfriend I might not have this dodgy leg.
I’m opening up the Old City. I’m developing the old town – tennis courts, cafes, apartments and car spaces. It can’t fail. It’s too bad we have to clear out the bums. We can’t have any agitators getting in the way.
********************************
Comments
Post a Comment