Tim Winton - The Turning

Boner was still around of course. He wasn’t as easy to spot because he drove an assortment of vehicles. Apart from the van there was a white Valiant, a flatbed truck and a Land Rover that looked like something out of Born Free . Our eyes met, we waved, but nothing more. There was something unresolved between us that I didn’t expect to deal with. Word was that the meatworks had sacked him over some missing cartons of beef. There were stories about him and his father duffing cattle out east and butchering them with chainsaws in valley bottoms. There was talk of stolen car parts, electrical goods, two-day drives to the South Australian border, meetings on tuna boats. If these whispers were true — and I knew enough by now to have my doubts — then the police were slow in catching them. There were stories of Boner and other girls, but I never saw any riding with him.

Town seemed uglier the year I turned sixteen. There was something feverish in the air. At first I thought it was just me, my new persona and the fresh perspective I had on things, but even my father came home with talk of break-ins, hold-ups, bashings.

The first overdose didn’t really register. I wasn’t at the school social — I was no longer the dancing sort — so I didn’t see the ambulancemen wheel the dead girl out of the toilets. I didn’t believe the talk in the quad. I knew better than to listen to the bullshit that blew along the corridors, all the sudden talk about heroin. But that overdose was only the first of many. Smack became a fact of life in Angelus. The stuff was everywhere and nobody seemed able or inclined to do a thing about it.

It was winter when Boner McPharlin was found out at Thunder Beach with his legs broken and his face like an aubergine. They made me wait two days before I could see him. At the hospital there were plainclothes cops in the corridor and one in uniform outside the door. The scrawny constable let me in without a word. Boner was conscious by then, though out of his tree on morphine. He didn’t speak. His eyes were swollen shut. I’m not even sure he knew who I was. With his legs full of bolts and pins he looked like a ruined bit of farm machinery.

I stayed for an hour, and when I left a detective fell into step beside me. He was tall with pale red hair. He offered me a lift. I told him no thanks, I was fine. He called me Jackie. I was still rocked by the sight of Boner. The cop came downstairs with me. He seemed friendly enough, though in the lobby he asked to see my arms. I rolled up my sleeves and he nodded and thanked me. He asked about Boner’s enemies. I told him I didn’t know of any. He said to leave it with him; it was all in hand. I plunged out into the rain.

I visited Boner every day after school but he wouldn’t speak. I was chatty for a while but after a day or so I took my homework with me, a biology text or The Catcher in the Rye. For a few days there were cops on the ward or out in the carpark, but then they stopped coming. The nurses were kind. They slipped me cups of tea and hovered at my shoulder for a peek at what I was reading. When the swelling went down and his eyes opened properly, Boner watched me take notes and mark pages and suck my knuckles. Late in the week he began to writhe around and shake. The hardware in his legs rattled horribly.

Open the door, he croaked.

Boner, I said. Are you alright? You want me to call a nurse?

Open the door. Don’t ever close the door.

I got up and pulled the door wide. There was a cop in the corridor, a constable I didn’t recognize. He spun his cap in his hands. He was grey in the face. He tried to smile.

You okay, Boner? I said over my shoulder.

Gotta have it open.

I went back and sat by the bed. I caught myself reaching for his hand.

Least you can talk, I murmured. That’s something.

Not me, he said.

You can talk to me , can’t you?

He shook his battered head slowly, with care. I sucked at a switch of hair, watched him tremble.

What happened?

Don’t remember, he whispered. Gone.

Talk to me, I said in a wheedling little voice. Why do you want the door open?

Can’t read, you know. Not properly. Can’t swim neither.

I sat there and licked my lips nervously. I was sixteen years old and all at sea. I didn’t know how to respond. There were questions I was trying to find words for but before I could ask him anything he began to talk.

My mother, he murmured, my mother was like a picture, kinda, real pretty. Our place was all spuds, only spuds. She had big hands all hard and black from grubbin spuds. I remember. When I was little, when I was sick, when she rubbed me back, in bed, and her hands, you know, all rough and gentle like a cat’s tongue, rough and gentle. Fuck. Spuds. Always bent down over spuds, arms in the muck, rain runnin off em, him and her. Sky like an army blanket.

She’s. . gone, your mum?

I come in and he’s bent down over her, hands in her, blanket across her throat, eyes round, veins screamin in her neck and she sees me not a word sees me and I’m not sayin a word, just lookin at the sweat shine on his back and his hands in the muck and she’s dead now anyway. Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, does it.

Boner gave off an acid stink. Sweat stood out on his forehead. I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying.

Sharks know, he said, they know. You see em flash? Twist into whalemeat? Jesus, they saw away. It’s in the blood, he had it, twistin all day into hot meat. And never sleep, not really.

Boner—

Sacked me for catchin bronzies off the meatworks jetty. Fuck, I didn’t steal nothin, just drove one round on the fork-lift for a laugh, to put the shits up em. Live shark, still kickin! They went spastic, said I’m nuts, said I’m irresponsible, unreliable.

The bedrails jingled as he shook.

But I’m solid, he said. Solid as a brick shithouse. Unreliable be fucked. Why they keep callin me unreliable? I drive and drive. I don’t say a word. They know, they know. Don’t say a fuckin word. Don’t leave me out, don’t let me go, I’m solid. I’m solid!

He began to cry then. A nurse came in and said maybe I should go.

Boner never said so much again in one spate — not to me, anyway. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, assumed it was delayed shock or infection or all the painkillers they had him on. When I returned next day he was calmer but he seemed displeased to see me. He watched TV, was unresponsive, surly, and that’s how he remained. I had study to keep up with. The TV ruined my concentration, so my visits grew fewer, until some weeks I hardly went at all. Then one day, after quite a gap, I arrived to find that he’d been discharged.

I didn’t see him for weeks, months. The school year ground on and I sat my exams with a war-like determination. As spring became summer I kept an eye out for Boner in town. I half expected to hear him rumble up behind me at any moment, but there was no sign of him.

I was walking home from the library one afternoon when a van eased in to the kerb. I looked up and it wasn’t him. It was a paddy wagon. A solitary cop. He beckoned me over. I hesitated but what could I do — I was a schoolgirl — I went.

You’re young McPharlin’s girlfriend, he said.

I recognized him. He was the nervous-looking constable from the hospital, the one who’d started hanging around after the others left. I’d seen him that winter in the local rag. He was a hero for a while, brought an injured climber down off a peak in the ranges. But he looked ill. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin was blotchy. There was a patch of stubble on his neck that he’d missed when shaving, and even from where I stood leaning into the window he smelt bad, a mixture of sweat and something syrupy. When I first saw him I felt safe but now I was afraid of him.