Tim Winton - The Turning

I was laughing again. I couldn’t resist it.

Vic, she said, is his father’s son.

Thanks, Mum.

And neither of us, Gail, is his grandmother.

Family, said Vic. It’s not a word, it’s a sentence.

Rubbish, said Carol. It’s an adventure.

Don’t give her any more to drink, said Vic.

But I did. I took her by the arm and we sat out under the grapevines where our clothes and hair dried awry and the sunset made the sky all Christmassy and we talked and laughed until we forgot the man between us and made some headway.

THE DAY AFTER HER DIAGNOSIS Mum sent me in search of the old man. She’d lain awake all night thinking and she told me she just wanted to see him again before she died. Although it was five in the morning she knew I’d be awake. I couldn’t believe what she was asking me to do — it was such a longshot, so unlikely that it felt cruel — but in the circumstances I had neither the heart nor the presence of mind to turn her down. I got out a map of Western Australia and studied it over a breakfast I had to force down with several coffees. I left messages at the office, kissed my sleepy wife goodbye and drove out of the city with the rising sun in my eyes.

Almost twenty-seven years had passed since I’d seen my father. I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. The only piece of information Mum had armed me with was the name of a bush pub in the eastern goldfields. It was there on the map, Sam’s Patch. The pub seemed to be the town. It was the last known address. As I drove I held the folded map to my face a moment and smelled the classrooms of my childhood.

I was too tired to be driving such distances that day but I fought to stay alert. At the outskirts of the city, the foothills and the forests still bore signs of the week’s drought-breaking storms. Road crews were out and men took chainsaws to fallen trees. A couple of hours east, machines were seeding wheat paddocks. Water lay in culverts at the roadside and birds gathered to wash themselves, hardly stirring as I passed. I drove until farms gave way to red earth and salmon gums, until the sun was behind me and the towns were mostly ruins amidst the slag heaps of mines long abandoned. Even out here, in staticky waves, the radio spewed scandal from the police royal commission.

Up past Kalgoorlie I turned off the highway onto a thin bitumen road which wound between old mineheads and diggings until it petered out amongst the remains of a ghost town. All that was left was the Sam’s Patch pub and before I reached it I pulled over and switched off the engine to think a minute. The hours on the road hadn’t given me any ideas about what to say or how to act. I’d concentrated so hard on staying awake that I was nearly numb and I sat there with the motor ticking and the window wound down long enough to feel queasy again at the thought of what I’d agreed to do. If this was it, if the old man was really in there, what sort of state would he be in after all this time? I tried to think in purely practical terms; I couldn’t afford to feel much now. I had to consider the logistical details of managing him, of cajoling and threatening and maintaining him for the time it took to deliver him as promised. The feelings I’d deal with later. But I dreaded it. God, how I dreaded it. He’d never been violent; I wasn’t afraid in that sense. It was the fear of going back to how things were. Drunks and junkies take everything out of you, all your patience, all your time and will. You soften and obscure and compensate and endure until they’ve eaten you alive and afterwards, when you think you’re finally free of it for good, it’s hard not to be angry at the prospect of dealing with the squalor again. There was no point in being furious at my mother for needing this, but I couldn’t help myself.

I drove up and pulled in to the blue-metal apron in front of the pub. It was a fine old building with stone walls and brick quoins and wide verandahs, stained with red dust and hung with barrows and wagon wheels and paraphernalia of the goldrushes. When I got out and stood stiff in the sunshine a blue heeler stirred on the steps and behind it, in the shadows of the verandah, an old man put his hat on but did not rise from where he sat. I licked my lips, summoned what I could of my professional self, and strode over.

Before the dog reached me I could see that the man was not my father. His low growl turned the heeler in its tracks. I stumped up onto the verandah almost faint with relief.

I’m looking for Bob Lang, I said without preamble.

And who would you be, then? asked the old bloke. He had the ruined nose and watery eyes of a dedicated drinker. His hat was a tattered relic of the last world war.

I’m his son.

Honest Bob. And you’re the son.

You know where he is?

The old cove nodded, his lips pursed. In the top pocket of his overalls was a spectacles case which he fished out in order to survey me.

Must look more like yer mother, he muttered.

I shrugged. I felt awkward standing there in my pressed jeans and pullover. The old fella considered my brogues with interest.

You in strife?

No, I answered.

He’s a good bloke is Bob.

I nodded at this to humour the old bugger and because I knew it to be true, but acknowledging it was painful.

The old bloke hauled himself up with a scrape of boots on the boards and opened the screen door. As he went in he flung the door back for my benefit and I followed him into a hall-like room that seemed to be emporium, public bar and community hall.

This your pub? I said taking it in.

Nup. Live out the back. Thommo’s day orf.

At the bar he took up a blank pad and the stub of a pencil whose lead he licked before drawing me a map and a route out to a destination he labelled BOB’S CAMP .

Bob the Banker, he said tearing the page off and passing it to me. There he is.

And this is us here?

That’s us.

I straightened up and looked at the rows of bottles behind the bar. It occurred to me that it might be useful to arrive with supplies. I felt the bloke watching me and I don’t know whether it was his undisguised interest or the bitterness I felt at having even to contemplate such a thing after all my mother had been through, but I decided against taking any booze, and so great was my relief at the decision that as I folded up his helpful scrap of paper I thought I saw a flicker of respect in the other man’s gaze, the afterglow of which lasted all the way to the car.

I drove on up the thin black road awhile until I found the dirt turnoff indicated by the pencil map. The track was broad but muddy from the recent rains and when I turned into it the car felt sluggish and skittish by turns. I really had to concentrate to keep from sliding off into the scrub. Out here the earth was red, almost purple. Set against it, the flesh-coloured eucalypts and the grey-blue saltbush seemed so high-keyed they looked artificial. I had expected a desert vista, something rocky and open with distant horizons, but this woodland, with its quartzy mullock heaps and small trees, was almost claustrophobic. Mud clapped against the chassis and wheel arches. When I hit puddles, great red sheets of water sluiced the windscreen. Wrestling the wheel, I drove for half an hour until I came to a junction marked with a doorless fridge. It corresponded to my pencil map; I turned north. Five minutes later I turned off onto a slippery, rutted track that ended in a four-way fork. After some hesitation I took the most northerly trail and drove slowly through old diggings and the pale blocks of fallen walls. The car wallowed through shimmering puddles and the track narrowed until saltbush glissed against the doors.

I’d begun to sweat and curse and look for some way of turning back when I saw the dull tin roof and the rusted stub of a windmill amongst the salmon gums. A dog began to bark. I eased into the clearing where a jumble of makeshift buildings and car bodies was scattered, and the moment I saw the man striding from the trees beyond, I knew it was him. I stalled the car and did not start it again. I was dimly aware of the dog crashing against the door, pressing itself across the glass at my shoulder. It really was the old man. He was taller than I remembered and I was startled by the way he carried himself, the unexpected dignity of him. All my manly determination deserted me. I uttered a shameful little o! of surprise. It was all I could do to unstrap myself and lurch out of the vehicle so as not to be sitting when he arrived. The dog clambered at my legs, but at the old man’s piercing whistle it desisted and ran to his side. For fear of looking fastidious I refrained from brushing the muddy pawprints from my jumper and jeans. I sat on the speckled hood of the car, folding and unfolding my arms. He came on through the waist-high saltbush, and when he reached me and the red dog sat as instructed, I saw that he was sober. I saw the wattles of his neck, the sun-lesions on his arms, the black filaments of work in his hands and the braces that held up his pants. He wore an ancient jungle hat, a faded work shirt and steel-capped boots more scarred than his long, melancholy face. His eyes were startled but clear.