Peter Carey - The Tax Inspector

He did two slow circuits with his quartzes on, blasting a pure white light through the cloud of clay dust his arrival had created. His four headlight beams cut like knives through the dust, illuminating the bullet-scarred, yellow garbage bins, the POLLUTED WATER signs, and twisted galvanized pipe boom gates (NO 4-WHEEL DRIVE ACCESS).

He had a 1:3 ratio first gear and he just walked the Monaro like a dog on a leash, torqued it round the perimeter of the parking area, checking to make sure there was no one here to mock what he was going to do.

The Franklin Redevelopment Region now had a hundred thousand school kids. The banks of the Wool Wash were littered with beer cans and condoms and paper cups. Petrol-heads came here to do one dusty spin-turn before screaming up through the S’s for the race back to the skid pan at the Industrial Estate. Stolen cars were abandoned here, virginities were lost, although not his. At weekends you could buy speed and crack by the gas barbecues. It was the sort of place you might find someone with their face shot away and bits of brain hanging on the bushes.

Benny drove round the edge of a metal boom gate. It bottomed out on some grass tussocks, and then he just slid it – you could feel the grass brushing along the floor beneath his feet – out of sight behind some ti-tree scrub.

When he had shut off the engine and the lights, he tucked the shot gun underneath his seat. Then he carefully removed his suit trousers and his shirt. He folded them loosely and placed them on the lambswool seat cover. He put on a T-shirt and a pair of swimming trunks and then he put on his shoes as a protection against AIDS.

Even though it was warm, the rain clouds made the night dark and his flash light was weak and yellow. He walked warily out across the empty car park to the river, carrying the ironed clothes in a red Grace Bros plastic shopping bag. The bank just here was flat and wide and treeless. When he got to where the round boulders started, he took off his good leather shoes and placed them in the shopping bag.

Benny failed every science subject he ever took, but he knew this water in Deep Creek now contained lead, dioxin and methyl mercury from the paper factory on Lantana Road. It was surprisingly cold on his feet. He could feel the poisons clinging like invisible odour-free oil slicks. They rode through the water like spiders’ webs, air through air, sticking to everything they touched. Benny moved quickly, but carefully.

He heard the sound of the approaching car when it was up on the turn off from Long Gully Road. It was a Holden. He recognized the distinctive sound of the water pump, that high hiss in the night. He hesitated, wondering whether he should go back to the car and wait but he did not want to have to walk into the poisons twice.

There was a light wind, a cool wash of air that pushed up the river like a wave and the big Casuarinas on the shore bent and made a soft whooshing noise. No matter what had changed, it still smelt like the Wool Wash – moss, rotting leaves, something like blackcurrants that was not blackcurrants, and the slightly muddy tannin smell of the water which you could once drink, puddles full, from Cacka’s old slouch hat.

The first package was the sneakers. He had them in a shoebox now, wrapped in ironed black paper and tied with a gold ribbon. He pushed the package out into the current, following it for a metre or two with the weak beam of his torch until it was lost.

He whispered: ‘When my past is dead, I am as free as air.’

Then he squatted and pushed out the blue parcel which contained his T-shirt. It was flat and neat like a twelve-inch L.P. For a moment it seemed to mould itself like a Kraft cheese slice on to a rock, but then it was picked up and although it was lost to sight Benny thought he could hear the sound of its paper skin brushing over the shallow rapids downstream.

He said: ‘When my past is cleared, there is only blue sky.’

The Holden was coming through the S bends above the river. He could see its lights as they cut out into the air. The car was burning oil and the lights cut back and shone white in the smoke of its own exhaust.

He hurriedly launched the gold parcel, throwing it a little carelessly so that it landed thin edge in and sank a little before it surfaced.

He spoke quickly: ‘My past is gone and I am new – born again – my future will be wrapped with gold.’

He stepped off the rock. He tried to put a shoe on, but he could not get his foot into it. The leather stuck on his wet skin. He leaned over to fix it. Then his ankle twisted and he stumbled. The Holden was through the last bend. Benny picked up the shoe and ran barefoot. Death was everywhere, but no way was anyone going to see him doing rituals in his underwear. The earth was alive with organisms which wished to make a host of his blood. He felt cuts, nicks, toxins, viruses. The car – a fucking taxi! – was driving right down to the water’s edge. He fled the beam of its lights and ran to his car. He got in, locked the doors, sat the shot gun across his lap.

The taxi did not stay long. As soon as it began its ascent through the S’s he dressed, and backed the Monaro out into the centre of the car park. When he turned to head back to Franklin, he saw, in the halogen-white glare of the headlights – Granny Catchprice. Her legs were apart. Her left hand was shading her eyes.

25

‘You pay me now,’ Pavlovic said. ‘Or I leave you here, dead-set. You walk all the way back to Franklin, wouldn’t worry me.’ He leaned back, opened the door on Mrs Catchprice’s side, and smiled.

Sarkis was smiling too. He had that hot burning sensation down the back of his throat. He sat on the edge of the back seat of the taxi with his broad white hands on his knees. He was baring his teeth and narrowing his eyes – ‘smiling’ – but Pavlovic wasn’t even aware of him. He was turned almost completely round in his seat with his hawk nose pointed at Mrs Catchprice.

‘Might give you nicer manners,’ he said.

‘You’ll be paid later,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘I don’t carry cash on me.’

‘You pay me now,’ said Pavlovic.

‘You heard her,’ Sarkis said, but he was the one no one seemed to hear.

‘Or you get out of my cab. That simple,’ he smiled again. His mouth was prissy and pinched as if he could smell something nasty on his upper lip.

Sarkis did not want to have a brawl in these trousers and this shirt but he could feel anger like curry in his throat. His eyes were narrowed almost to slits in his incredulous, smiling face. Pavlovic was so thin . Sarkis smoothed the $199 grey moire trousers against his muscled thighs. He looked at Mrs Catchprice to see what it was she wanted him to do.

Mrs Catchprice, it seemed, needed nothing from him. Whatever Pavlovic said to her did not matter. Indeed she was concerned with her cigarette lighter, which had fallen down the back of the seat.

‘I did not come to the Wool Wash to sit in the car. Ah,’ she held up her Ronson. ‘I cannot bear it when I see people sitting in their car to look at the scenery.’

Pavlovic sighed loudly and Sarkis – he couldn’t help himself – slapped him on the side of the head, fast, sharp.

‘You stop that,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘Right now.’

Sarkis opened his mouth to protest.

‘I don’t hire louts,’ said Mrs Catchprice.

Pavlovic said something too but Sarkis did not hear what it was. Pavlovic was holding a clenched fist in the air and Sarkis kept an eye on it, but all his real attention was on Mrs Catchprice – what did she want him to do?

‘Maybe you should pay him,’ he said.

Mrs Catchprice ‘acted’ her response. She smiled a large ‘nice’ smile that made her white teeth look as big as an old Buick grille. ‘I always pay my suppliers when they have completed the job.’