Common People Read online

  Praise for Blood

  ‘Many of us have known for a long time what a wonderful storyteller Tony Birch is. Blood confirms it – and how. The terrain is hard, unflinching but also imbued with a deeply resonant humanism. For at its heart there is Jesse, the young narrator whose voice is urgent and compelling, sweet and direct.’

  —Christos Tsiolkas

  ‘His début, Blood, is nothing short of outstanding. Tony Birch could take home a few prizes, deservedly so. Blood is a humanist masterpiece that has been worth the wait.’

  —Australian Book Review

  ‘… Blood is irresistibly compelling.’

  —Saturday Age

  ‘This thoughtful and rewarding book’s attempt to reconcile human rights and national sovereignty is well worth consideration.’

  —Weekend Australian

  Praise for The Promise

  ‘Throughout The Promise there’s the sense of a writer who has landed in the sweet spot of his gift.’

  —Weekend Australian

  ‘Tony Birch’s The Promise stamped him as the outstanding Australian practitioner over shorter distances.’

  —Australian Book Review

  ‘Birch’s fiction confronts the reader with rural and urban landscapes of abandonment, scenes of decay and decline. The Promise demands we go looking for that which is harder to see.’

  —Sydney Review of Books

  ‘The Promise is grubby and gruff but also fragile. Reading each story is like shucking an oyster, breaking through a knobby, hardened shell to discover something tender within.’

  —Mascara Literary Review

  ‘Tough, tight, powerful stories of love, loss and falling by the wayside from a master of the short-form genre.’

  —Qantas Magazine

  ‘Birch has great empathy and a skilful pen to match.’

  —Sydney Morning Herald

  Praise for Ghost River

  ‘Birch is a sophisticated writer: technically adroit even at his most raw, mindful of the anticanon from which his own work emerges, he nonetheless reserves the right to deal in his chosen subject matter with a simplicity and intermittent grace that has no ideological grounds beyond the desire to allow a story to tell itself.’

  —The Weekend Australian

  ‘The title nods to the idea that beneath the Yarra lies a ghost river that takes good souls to its heart and spits out the bad … What shines through Birch’s writing is his love for the river and the carefree summer days of his childhood.’

  —The Guardian Australia

  ‘Birch is a very fine imagist, and his deft touches when describing the boys’ interactions with the natural world, especially, are masterful … It is a beautiful novel.’

  —The Saturday Paper

  Tony Birch is the author of Ghost River, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. He is also the author of Shadowboxing, and two short story collections, Father’s Day and The Promise. Tony is a frequent contributor to ABC local and national radio and a regular guest at writers’ festivals. He lives in Melbourne and is a Senior Research Fellow at Victoria University.

  Also by Tony Birch

  Shadowboxing

  Father’s Day

  Blood

  The Promise

  Ghost River

  For Isabel Kit

  Isabel, Isabel, didn’t worry,

  Isabel didn’t scream or scurry

  —Ogden Nash, ‘The Adventures of Isabel’

  CONTENTS

  The Ghost Train

  Harmless

  Death Star

  Joe Roberts

  The White Girl

  Party Lights

  LIAM

  Painted Glass

  SISSY

  Frank Slim

  Raven and Sons

  PAPER MOON

  The Good Howard

  Colours

  Worship

  Acknowledgements

  THE GHOST TRAIN

  Lydia turned into marian’s darkened driveway around eleven, switched off the car’s headlights and chewed on her fingernails while she waited. She’d left the house worried she might not get home in time the next morning, doubtful that her fourteen year old would be enthusiastic enough to get himself out of bed for school, let alone his younger sister, who needed to be fed, dressed and dragged to the bus stop.

  Lydia popped her head out of the side window when she heard the front door slam and saw her friend’s silhouette running towards her. Marian jumped into the passenger seat wearing shorts and a bra. She carried a T-shirt in her hand. She slipped the T-shirt on and Lydia looked across at the face of Barack Obama, his full cheeks aided by Marian’s curvaceous breast job, a parting birthday gift from her husband who’d run away with a twenty year old he’d met at the gym six months before. He’d cleaned out the family bank account and re-mortgaged the house to finance a world trip for himself and the new girlfriend. Marian lost the house, and by the time she’d paid off her debts she had nothing to show for fifteen years of marriage except her twin boys and the new boobs.

  Lydia reversed out of the driveway, put her foot to the floor and roared out of the street. ‘You’re late. If we don’t get there on time, there’ll be no work and this will be a fucking waste of time. Who’s taking care of the twins?’

  ‘My sister, Peg. They’re at her place. She’ll drop them at school in the morning. Anyway, what’s the big deal if we’re a couple of minutes late? You said yesterday Carlo has it sorted.’

  ‘He does. But only if we’re on the line for the shift. Last words he said were Don’t be late. And you’re always fucking late.’

  ‘Okay. Sorry. Give me a cigarette.’

  Lydia pointed to Barack Obama. ‘Where’d you get that tee? You know that it’s about two sizes too small.’

  Marian pulled on the front of the T-shirt. ‘It’s not the top. It’s my tits that are too big.’ She grabbed a breast in each hand. ‘There was a discount on when I got them done. They offered to supersize me for the same price. The old man’s eyes lit up when he heard that. He was paying, so I could hardly say no.’

  ‘I’m still asking, who gave it to you, the T-shirt?’

  ‘A fella I’ve been seeing. He was in the States on business and brought it back.’

  ‘What fella?’

  ‘The IT fella. Justin. You remember Justin?’

  ‘Justin from Adelaide?’

  ‘The one and only.’

  ‘Fucking Justin? The last time he was in town, you never shut up telling me what a lousy fuck he was. He’s back?’

  ‘He was here last week. Passing through on the way home to his wife and kids.’

  ‘You’re telling me that the same Tinder-man you said was the weakest fuck on the planet went all the way to the United States, came back, called in here for a pit stop with you, and all you got out of the deal was a T-shirt with a picture of the American president on the front? What about some duty-free perfume or jewellery for fuck’s sake? You fucked the cheapskate for a shirt?’

  ‘I never said I fucked him.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I know you fucked him. You have that look on your face.’

  ‘What look?’

  ‘Like you’ve just fucked a bloke. A shit ride maybe. But a ride.’

  Marian ran a fingernail across the word HOPE below the president’s face. ‘I don’t care. I love the T-shirt, and the message. It’s saying, you know, don’t give up. Hope.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

&
nbsp; ‘Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with hope, Lydia. Just because you’ve given up on the world, doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. And I like his face. Obama. Have you seen him on the TV? He’s fucking beautiful.’

  She turned the car radio on and hit the buttons until she found a thumping beat. ‘Have you ever slept with a black man?’

  Lydia turned onto the highway and headed west. ‘I tried to one time when I was pissed. I put the hard word on Carlo. We had a go at it in the back of his car. I was unclipping my bra when he changed his mind. Said he had to think about his wife.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him he could have given her a bit more thought before he got me in his Commodore and stuck his tongue in my mouth and a hand in my pants. He shit himself and begged me not to talk about it.’

  ‘He’s probably Catholic. Carlo’s from Argentina, isn’t he? They’re all Catholics over there. Anyway, if you had’ve fucked him it wouldn’t count. He’s not black. Carlo is brown.’

  ‘He’s as black as that fella on the front of your T-shirt. Anyway, Carlo backing out had nothing to do with him being Catholic. Your ex is a Catholic, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Well, I reckon he’d fuck a nun.’

  ‘He probably has. Jesus, I hate this song.’ Marian pressed the buttons on the radio until she found an old Fleetwood Mac hit. ‘And wouldn’t she go off?’ she laughed.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The nun. Imagine that. Locked away in a convent for years and getting out for her first ride. She’d light up like a pinball machine.’

  ‘Not if she was stiff enough to end up in bed with my old man. You know they named a movie after him?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Gone in 60 Seconds. And that was exaggerating it. More like half a minute. I couldn’t pick a decent fuck to save myself.’

  They passed the lights of the twenty-four-hour service station and cafe on the highway. ‘It should be the next left.’ Lydia leaned forward and searched the road through the dirty front windscreen.

  ‘There it is,’ Marian shouted. They turned onto a narrow dirt road cutting through unfamiliar country. Marian looked out of the side window. The air was full of dust and insects. ‘Where you taking us? Ivan Milat country?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Lydia started giggling to herself.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ Marian asked.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Come on. Tell me.’

  ‘Ivan Milat.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You heard the joke about him?’

  ‘Nah. And I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  ‘Okay. Ivan Milat picks up this young couple, backpackers hitch-hiking, and drives them into the countryside. He gets them out of his truck and forces them to walk deeper into the bush, where it’s dark and creepy. One of the couple he’s kidnapped turns to Milat and says, “Hey, it’s really scary in here.” And Milat, he says, “It sure is. But it’s all right for you two. I’m going to have to walk out on my own.”’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ Marian said.

  ‘You don’t get the joke?’

  ‘Yeah, I get the joke. And it’s not funny. He was a horrible man, and he did terrible things to people.’

  ‘Are you shitting me? Loosen up. You were just telling me I’d given up on life. Jesus, Marian. It’s a joke.’

  They drove on in silence. The countryside was monotonously flat. They passed the occasional light out front of a rundown farmhouse, most likely belonging to an illegal enterprise of one kind or another. The plains were known to police for cockfighting rings, drug labs, dog fights and off-the-grid slaughterhouses. Marian found herself drifting off. She lifted her head in an effort to stay awake. ‘What’s the pay rate again?’

  ‘Two hundred each, less twenty per cent for the foreman and another five skim for Carlo. The take-home is a hundred and fifty each.’

  ‘Have you packed meat before?’

  ‘Nah. But everything else. Apples. Baby formula. Fertiliser. Shouldn’t be a lot different.’

  Out of the darkness the dim outline of a row of shipping containers shunted together came into view. Lydia could see the tail lights of cars lined up on the road ahead. She accelerated in an effort to join the convoy. The car skidded from one side of the road to the other. Marian coughed and wound up her window. ‘What the fuck are you doing? You’ll get us killed before we start.’

  ‘I want to beat the crowd. Don’t be last on the line. It was the other thing Carlo said to me.’

  They parked the car. Other would-be workers were already hurrying towards the open doorway of one of the containers. Slow to get out of the car, Marian ran to catch up with Lydia. The line ahead ground to a halt. Lydia did a quick body count. There were around twenty people in front of them and as many behind, with more people coming.

  She turned to Marian and winked. ‘We should be okay.’

  ‘Looks like the United Nations are here. You see Carlo?’

  ‘He doesn’t have to line up. He’s one of the boners. They’re royalty in the meat trade.’

  Marian poked Lydia in the arse. ‘You’d love him boning you.’

  Lydia ignored her. She had her eye on a woman, most likely Vietnamese she thought, ahead of them in the line. Lydia wore a singlet and cotton leggings and was soaked with sweat. She stared at the woman’s rubber pants. They reminded her of the waders her father used to wear when he went out duck shooting. The line moved forward, through the open door, where each person was handed a number torn from a book of raffle tickets by a man wearing a white dustcoat. The name ‘Charlie’ was handwritten above a breast pocket.

  ‘Hold onto your tickets,’ he barked. One side of the containers was lined with steel benches. On the other, opened cardboard boxes were stacked to ceiling height, ready for use. The line of containers had open doors at each end and went on into the darkness. An argument broke out behind Lydia and Marian. The foreman was trying to close the door on those at the end of the line. ‘We’ve got all we need. Try back tomorrow night.’

  A man being pushed out the doorway pleaded with him. ‘I drove two hours for this job. I don’t even have the petrol money to get home. Please.’

  Charlie leaned forward and spoke quietly in the man’s ear. He nodded his head and Charlie allowed him to join the end of the line before bolting the door and inspecting the crowd. He stopped in front of Marian and looked down at her bare legs. His tongue rested on his bottom lip. He looked up, stared at her breasts and pointed to Barack Obama’s bulbous cheeks.

  ‘Are you political or something?’

  Marian nervously patted one breast. ‘No. Not me.’

  ‘Good. You girls together?’ he asked Lydia.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He licked his bottom lip. ‘A couple?’

  Lydia couldn’t help herself. ‘You wish,’ she answered.

  ‘What’s that?’ he snapped. ‘We don’t put up with any smart-arses here. Are you a smart-arse, girl?’

  Lydia wanted to tell him to go fuck his fat self. She said nothing and looked down at the floor.

  He stopped again, in front of the next worker in line, the Vietnamese woman. ‘Good to see you, Mary. You my worker number one,’ he mocked.

  ‘I’m not Mary. It’s Rose,’ she answered.

  ‘Mary. Rose. Same difference,’ he shrugged.

  He completed the muster, walked across the room and knocked at the glass door of a small office. ‘They’re ready,’ Charlie said to a man whose own dustcoat identified him as the manager. He inspected the line, grouping workers together. ‘These two on the freezer. Next four, packing at the boning table. Two on the steam hose …’

  The manager reached Lydia and Marian. ‘
I haven’t seen you before. You have a name for me?’

  ‘Carlo,’ Lydia answered.

  ‘Did he go over the rate with you?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And the carve up?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good,’ he smiled, and turned to Charlie. ‘Put them on packing with this one,’ he ordered, pointing to the Vietnamese woman. ‘You two,’ he said to Lydia, ‘follow what she does. And try keeping up with her.’

  He took Charlie aside and spoke quietly to him. ‘The last on the line, you explain the terms to him?’

  ‘He’s happy enough being picked up. The man’s desperate.’

  ‘Good. Put him out back on the barrel.’

  ‘We have a truck coming in?’

  ‘From New South Wales. They shit themselves when the live baiting story got out. Talk about a slaughter. It’s carnage up there. They’ve been spending more on bullets than feed.’

  The workers were shuffled into a second room, where their raffle tickets were handed to a woman at a desk. She made a note of each ticket number, photocopied IDs of any new faces, and pointed to a pile of white overalls and rubber boots in the corner. The overalls Marian picked up were several sizes too big. She couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous she and Lydia looked.

  ‘Hey, I’m bringing sexy back,’ she sang.

  She hadn’t noticed that Charlie, the foreman, was standing in the doorway watching the women change.

  ‘Come on, girls. Let’s not fuck around. The boners are at the tables ready to go. There’s a toilet if you need it. Take a break only if you have to, and keep up if you want to come back another night.’

  The boners, each wearing an apron and a knife belt, stood at the row of steel tables, while other workers, shouldering sides of beef, marched the aisles dumping a carcass in front of each boner. Lydia and Marian watched in astonishment as the men, including Carlo, who winked across the room at Lydia, went to work with precision, slicing each carcass into a range of cuts: shoulders, legs, hind quarters and steaks. The meat was transferred to the tables, where it was packed, sealed and labelled. Rose instructed Lydia and Marian what to do, mostly through her actions. She collected an empty box, stood it on one end and began packing beef shoulders into it.