‘Did before the election. Now the tower’s down. Expect they’ll fix it in time for the next vote.’ Her smile is a sardonic one. ‘There’s a landline in your room. Worked last time I checked. Anything else I can help you with?’
‘Yeah. The name of your motel. It’s a bit strange, isn’t it?’
‘Nup. Not forty years ago it wasn’t. Why should we change it just because some bunch of losers like the sound of it?’
Martin’s room is soulless. Having read Defoe’s piece, he’d been looking forward to staying in the pub: beers with the locals, a flow of information from candid bar staff, a counter meal of local steak and overcooked vegetables, a short climb up the stairs to sleep. Perhaps a midnight stagger down the corridor to the communal toilet for a piss, to be sure, but an old building with some character, oozing stories, not the utilitarian blandness of this dogbox: a bare fluorescent tube for a light, a sagging bed with brown spread, the chemical stench of air freshener, a grunting bar fridge and a clanking air-conditioner. There’s a phone and a bedside clock, both decades old. Better than sleeping in the car, but not much. He calls the news desk, gives them the motel’s number, warns them that his mobile is out of action.
Martin strips off, goes into the bathroom, flushes the dead flies that have accumulated in the toilet bowl, relieves himself, flushes again. He runs the tap at the basin, fills one of the tumblers. The water smells of chlorine and tastes of river. He gets the shower going, not bothering with the hot tap, scowls at the flaccid water pressure, then steps under the flow and lets the water fall across him. He stands there until it no longer feels cool. He holds up his hands, examines them. They’ve turned white and puffy, wrinkled by the water, like a drowned corpse. When did his hands begin to look so foreign to him?
His body cooler, the room reluctantly cooling, he dries himself and climbs into the bed, throwing off all but the sheet. He needs to rest. It’s been a long day: the early start, the flight, the drive, the heat. The heat. He sleeps. Awakens to a room growing darker.
He dresses, drinks more of the abominable water, looks at his watch: seven-twenty.
Outside, behind the motel, the sun persists in the January sky, hanging large and orange above the horizon. Martin leaves the car and walks. The Black Dog Motel, he realises, really is on the edge of town. There’s only a derelict service station between it and the empty paddocks. Across the road, there’s a railway line and a set of towering wheat silos, glowing golden in the setting sun. Martin takes a snap. Then he walks past the abandoned petrol station to where the entrance of the town is marked by the obligatory signs: RIVERSEND, says one; POPULATION 800, says another; LEVEL 5 WATER RESTRICTIONS NOW IN PLACE, says a third. Martin climbs a low ridge running perpendicular to the highway, not more than a metre high; he frames the signs with the abandoned service station on the left and the wheat silos on the right, the setting sun sending his shadow across the road behind the signs. He wonders how long ago the population was eight hundred, what it might be now.
He walks back towards town, feeling the power of the sun on his back even this late in the day. There are houses abandoned and houses occupied, houses with drought-dead gardens and houses boasting bore-water verdure. He passes the green corrugated-steel shed of the volunteer fire brigade before pausing at the junction with Hay Road, with its shops sheltering beneath their joined awnings. Another photograph.
He continues east along the highway, past a deserted supermarket, its sun-bleached CLOSING DOWN SALE banners still plastered to its doors; past the Shell service station, its owner giving him a friendly wave as he closes up for the night; alongside a park, green grass with more signs—BORE WATER ONLY, a band rotunda and a toilet block for motorists, all sitting below a levee bank. And another bridge, two lanes and concrete, stretching out across the river. Martin draws a map of Riversend in his mind: a T-junction fitted snugly into a curve in the river, with the levee bank cosseting the town to the north and east. Martin likes the layout; there is something considered and self-contained about it. Adrift on the vast inland plain, it anchors Riversend to some sense of purpose.
He scrambles up the side of the levee bank beside the bridge, finding a foot track running along its ridge. He stands and looks back along the highway, wiping sweat from his brow. The horizon is lost in a haze of dust and heat, but he feels he can see the curvature of the earth, as if he’s standing on a headland looking out to sea. A truck thunders across the bridge and past him, heading west. The sun is setting, turned angry and orange by dust, and he watches the truck until it is first contorted, then swallowed whole by the haze.
Martin leaves the road, walking on top of the levee bank. Beside him the riverbed, glimpsed through the gums, is cracked bare mud. He’s thinking the trees look healthy enough, until he comes to a dead trunk, looking as solid as its neighbours, just devoid of leaves. A flock of cockatoos passes overhead, their raucous calls awakening the sounds of other birds and creatures in the twilight. He follows the path until he reaches a curve in the riverbed. Above it, on a natural rise, sits a yellow-brick building, the Riversend Services and Bowling Club, its lights shining out through plate-glass windows above a steel-form deck, like a cruise ship beached at low tide.
Inside the club, the air is cool. There’s a counter, with temporary membership forms and a sign instructing visitors to sign themselves in. Martin complies, tearing off a guest slip. The main room is large, with long windows looking out across the river bend, the trees almost imperceptible in the dusk outside the brightly lit room. There are tables and chairs, but no patrons. Not a soul. The only movement is the lights flashing garishly from poker machines standing beyond a low partition at the far end of the room. A barman is sitting behind the long bar reading a book. He looks up as Martin approaches.
‘G’day there. Get you a beer?’
‘Thanks. What’ve you got on tap?’
‘These two here.’
Martin orders a schooner of Carlton Draught, asking the barman if he would like one.
‘No thanks,’ says the barman. He begins to pull Martin’s beer. ‘You the journo?’
‘That’s right,’ says Martin. ‘Word spreads fast.’
‘Country towns. What can you say?’ says the barman. He looks like he’s in his early sixties, face red from a life of sun damage and beers, white hair combed and plastered in place by hair oil. His hands are large and marred by liver spots. Martin admires them. ‘Come to write about the shooting?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Good luck finding anything new to say. Seems to me everything has been written three times over.’
‘You could be right about that.’
The barman takes Martin’s money and deposits it in the till.
‘You don’t have wi-fi here, by any chance?’ asks Martin.
‘Sure do. In theory, anyway.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Doesn’t work half the time. And, when it does, it’s like drought relief: comes in dribs and drabs. But give it a whirl, there’s no one else here, so it mightn’t be clogged up.’
Martin smiles. ‘What’s the password?’
‘Billabong. From back when we had one.’
Martin succeeds in logging in on his phone, but his emails won’t load; there is only a spinning wheel of computational indecision. He gives up and puts the phone away. ‘I see what you mean.’
He knows he should ask about the killings, how the town is reacting, but he feels somehow reluctant. So instead he asks where everyone is.
‘Mate, it’s Monday night. Who’s got money to drink on a Monday?’
‘How come you’re open then?’
‘’Cos if we’re not open, we’re shut. And there’s too many places shut around here.’
‘They can still afford to pay you, though?’
‘They don’t. Most days, we’re volunteers. Board members. We have a roster.’
‘That’s impressive. Wouldn’t happen in the city.’
‘It’s why we’re still open and the pub is shut. No one’s going to work in a pub for free.’