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  His father was right, he thinks. ‘Never, ever trust a sheila,’ his father had said the last time he saw him. ‘I trusted your mother and she ran out on us, remember?’ And how could he forget, for it was then his father turned to crime to support a couple of growing lads. But he was never a good thief and now he lay, emaciated from cancer that gnawed away at him, lying in the narrow uncomfortable prison bed covered in thin grey blankets and none-too-clean sheets.

  If the truth was to be told his father had run out on them, being the unsuccessful crook he was, always getting caught for pissy little jobs that never amounted to much. They could have been a happy family if he had settled down instead of spending his life in and out of jail. The oldest son had vowed never to be like that. That is the gift his father left him. Because now he was a well-known, much-feared man – Donny Betts, wanted Australia-wide – but in the end he was his father’s son after all, getting caught by the honeyed snares of a woman – blonde-haired, blue-eyed, brown-skinned, good in bed, no brains … he had thought.

  At least his brother will get away. Loyal to his family, no amount of threats or coercion forced him to give Jimbo up but he knows he can’t see him for a long time and this upsets him for they had been very close: Donny and Jimbo – more best mates than brothers and what did they say: you can choose your mates but not your family. He knows that if he is ever released he can live out his old age in the tatters of the dreams he held like fine silk once not so long ago.

  But did he only imagine the looks passing between his brother and that bitch as he was dragged out of the motel room?

  Now he was stuck in this cell with life’s losers snarling at each other. On principle he had nothing to do with abos – the one time he had been inside showed him they were mostly petty crims in for moronic incidents: shitty little break and enters, stealing cars and generally crashing them, home invasions, rape. They were annoying little black flies buzzing around his head. They were cowards, drugged-out fuck-ups and dogs the lot of them.

  All his conceptions appeared true as he watched the bleary dopey eyes of the one and the agitated movements of the other – a drunkard and a petty thief, that about summed the whole race up, he thought. He would be amused if his own predicament were not so serious. He had thought there might be a slim chance of breaking out of this one-horse town but listening to the dopey one’s comments it seemed that breaking out he would have nowhere to go.

  ‘What do we do for a cup of tea around ’ere, Mr Bojangles?’ Spider rasped.

  ‘Give the constable a loverly big kiss, broh. ’e’ll soon butter up ya arse.’

  Silence fell once more upon the dingy room. Spider’s quick mind worked overtime planning to escape this dilemma. Perhaps the police were as stupid as his cellmate. Perhaps they wouldn’t recognise him. He had heard of a prisoner arrested for a minor misdemeanour then let loose the next day, when he was wanted in three states.

  ‘When’s the Judge comin’? You reckon I’ll just get a fine or what?’

  ‘What ya do, broh?’

  ‘Nicked a blanket to keep warm and some food.’

  ‘Oh, regular Al Capone, unna! Judge give ya years for that, bud. Fuckin’ years!’ Gary smiled, pleased at the consternation his words put on his tormenter’s face.

  He sang softly to himself, an Elvis Presley song he loved.

  ‘Don’t be cru-u-el to a heart that’s true.’

  His mother had given ‘Elvis’ as his second name – Gary Elvis Mindari – often telling him he would be as good a singer one day. So he grew up with Elvis Presley songs and Elvis Presley movies. He styled himself on the great man when he was younger and had dreamed of becoming as famous a singer one day.

  A standing joke between Gary and the constable every time he was released was that he would fling back an imaginary cape and utter in perfect imitation:

  ‘Thank you very much … Elvis has now just left the building.’ It never failed to get a chuckle.

  Yes, ‘Than’-you-very-much,’ he would mutter Elvis-like from the side of his mouth as he stepped out into the morning. But he would not hear the birds sing or see the sun rise. He only thought of when the pub would be opening. Sometimes he would mutter to himself, also in Elvis-mode, ‘This one’s for you, Mama,’ and let the memories flow in.

  He laughed now, thinking about the drink he would buy with his last twenty bucks and set his mind to thinking who he could bludge off until next dole day.

  ‘What have you got to laugh about ya dopey prick?’ Spider growled, echoing the big white man’s thoughts exactly. ‘Ya better not be laughin’ at me!’

  ‘Why not, bud! You as funny as a barrel of monkeys. And not one key opens the door,’ Gary chuckled.

  Spider snorted angrily. He could smell the alcohol from right across the room. He never had anything to do with alcohol, keeping away from solvents and speed and other heavy drugs as well, that had ruined so many of his peers. A sharp clear mind was what was needed if life had dealt you a crappy hand.

  The shadow jerks on the bright cartoon pattern of the walls of the room. His very own, he had been told. He is special, he has been told, and so it seems for he has his own room, a Game Boy, PlayStation, his own stereo and a chest full of the latest toys. He even has a few friends at school so on weekends sometimes they come to play and there are barbecues, cruises on the launch his father is so proud of.

  Not his real father of course. Not his real mother either, but the only family he has ever known. Smiling red faces, merry blue eyes, lots of joking around amidst the discipline. Pats on the curly head, friendly taps on the bottom, a kiss goodnight.

  Here he comes now. Shadows jerk against the bright patterns of Bart Simpson, Homer, Marge and the others, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny and all the crew. But they can’t help him just as his friends at school can’t help him. Trapped in a soft silken cocoon like the spider’s victim. Here comes the spider now with soft words and empty eyes oozing smiles and a hand, soft and white as pus creeping under the sheet to crawl upon his skin.

  They call paedophiles rock spiders in prison slang. But he was called Spider because he had absolutely no mercy at all – just like his real father.

  He had kept away from home as often as he could when he became aware the games his foster-father played were not right. He blamed himself and was headed down the path of shame and confusion and degradation, leading to alcohol and drug abuse. All the presents in the world and the love of a woman who, he sensed, would take the side of her husband were not worth it.

  So he left, choosing his own path in life. He found pleasure sneaking into other people’s bedrooms and taking their Game Boys, stereos, DVD recorders or whatever else he wanted. He owned any house in the city – a powerful person and a much better high than any drugs or drink could give him. If he was arrested he was usually out within the month or two. But when he was thirteen he stabbed his first victim, another street kid, in a fight over a pair of Nikes. By the time he was twenty he had spent six months in the big boys’ prison and gained a reputation, just as his father had, of being a hard violent man best left alone.

  He was up in this forgotten part of the world because his anger had finally boiled over when, lounging on the street, he saw his former foster-father, near the park, proposition a boy Spider vaguely knew, who was high on solvent abuse and didn’t know what he was doing.

  Spider darted forwards, enjoying the surprise on his victim’s face, then the complacent smile of recognition, then the look of horror and disbelief as the long wicked knife slid home, through silk suit, through puffy white skin into where his heart should have been.

  But Spider knew the boy he had saved would have no loyalty towards him. He was no kin whatsoever. He would dob him in and, like his father, he would be jailed forever.

  He had been heading out to places unknown, perhaps to find the mother he could not even remember, just the faint recollection of a warm
brown breast feeding him warm milk and a fuzzy memory of a gentle smiling face. It was always his dream to find his mother one day. The rose and the words had been his first tattoo, put on his skinny arm by an older street kid when he was only ten. A rose to remind him of his mum’s name from a half-remembered story some old woman had told him.

  ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, howlin’ all the time,’ Gary sang, looking directly at him.

  ‘For Crise sakes, ya know any modern songs? What about Notorious BIG?’

  ‘What about ’im? Dead, ain’t ’e!?’

  ‘So’s bloody Elvis.’

  ‘Not to me he isn’t, broh. Me and Mum used to love Elvis.’

  His father also has the second name of Elvis, his mother tells him when he is only three: ‘The Black Elvis we yorgas used to call ’im,’ she says. ‘Deadly dancer ya dad and sing like a bird he could.’

  The world is still a fine place for a chubby happy three-year-old. A happy life in a peaceful town. They are the only Nyoongahs left when there had once been many living on the old Reserve outside of town: Mindaris, Funnells, Whites, Feathers, Pigeons …

  As he gets older he shows an interest in football, becoming almost a star on the team that never won a premiership. He dreams of becoming a fabulously wealthy singer and the highlight of his life was winning the talent show the town put on as a fundraiser once. He dreams of moving away to far-off Perth and doing a music course or becoming an electrician or mechanic. He spends so much time dreaming he never gets anywhere.

  His mother enjoys a drink – until the memories hit her like a brick. She drinks to drown out past sadness and memories. One of them is when the Welfare women came and took away her first-born, she once tells a surprised Gary, interested slightly to learn he has a brother somewhere. Taken because she and her man were deemed unfit parents. So his mother drinks from sorrow and this he can understand; knows something of her pain. He tried to be like the son she had lost to take away that pain but he could not even succeed at that. It bothered him too. Once, before he was born, there had been another Elvis, yet nothing remained of him … not a photo … nothing but his mother’s anguish – but he is in the building now!

  When she dies she is only fifty-one and he is just eighteen. His world dies too. Realising life is passing him by with nothing much to show for it he sinks even deeper into apathy. His fantasies are sometimes peopled by an image of a brother come to rescue him from this life, a rich and famous brother … a famous sportsman maybe or a wealthy member of society who will help him in his ambitions. But he soon gives up on his tenuous hold on dreams for the reality is his brother is gone. One by one the mocking dreams float unattainable into the sky until all he has left is his jokes and Friday Night Karaoke when, for a while, he is a star again. That’ll do him, he thinks, downing another cask of Fruity Lexia. He has forgotten the brother he never knew. He also never knew his wandering father. He loved his mother, who was taken so young, and he loves this little town … and Elvis Presley songs … and his wine.

  He sees the shadow of his mother everywhere. It is why he will never leave this town.

  ‘Come on, ya fuckwit. I ast ya polite-like now I’m tellin’ ya! What about this Judge! Is ’e likely to slap me ’and then send me on me way? I never stole much anyrate, just some meat outa the fridge and a poxy blanket off the line.’

  ‘Yeah, I seen that blanket. Ya couldn’t pinch a better one than that old grey thing? What! Are you the Grey Ghost?’ Gary grinned.

  ‘The Judge! Is ’e a bastard or what?!’

  ‘Probably give ya fifty years for stealin’ that blanket. On the chain gang,’ Gary said deadpan then laughed. ‘Naaah, just let ya out on community work, most prob’ly. Sometimes he offers a kid ’e’ll buy them a bike if they be’ave.’ He looked the skinny, tattooed stranger up and down and grinned again. ‘But you look a bit too old for bikes, unna!’

  The outer door to the office opened. The constable walked in with a triumphant look on his face. Behind him are the two drivers of the prison van.

  ‘Elvis Cockle?’ he said, looking directly at Spider, then smiled wider when he saw the furtive reaction. ‘Yes … the rose tattoo. Well, chum, you’re not seeing your mum any time soon. The bloke you stabbed died last night. Some people want to talk to you in Perth right now!’

  Just for a second the two youths’ shadows merged as one on the grimy wall before the door clanged open and the two warders from the repaired van stomped business-like into the cell to hustle him and the white man outside.

  They had to get these two dangerous criminals quickly into the van. Too often this particular company had messed up with people dying in vans, one famous escape involving seven prisoners … They would not make a mistake like that!

  First bewilderment and then, understanding, a little light lit up in his dull eyes.

  ‘Elvis Cockle,’ Gary said in a whisper. ‘Hey, you’re my brother,’ he called after the hastily retreating men. ‘We got the same mother,’ he sang out a pathetic song to the sound of the clashing crashing closing door.

  But he did not know if he had been heard.

  He sank down in the corner, huddling against the wall – just his shadow and himself – like it had always been.

  ‘Broh! Ngooni!’ he whispered. ‘You and me got the same mum, Rosalind Mindari. I’m your brother, Gary Elvis Mindari, man!’

  Outside, Spider is shoved unceremoniously into the hard iron insides of the van with the wadjela. The van takes off with a roar, jolting them as the heavy vehicle lumbers towards distant captivity. His shadow bounces on the hard iron wall. He often said his shadow was his only friend.

  All his life he had searched for his mother. He does not care about the man he murdered. He does not care about the bitter man he shares this space with. He does not care about his father whose tales of aggression have kept him going all these years. By some twist of fate he had paced the cell most of the night and all that day just a handshake away from his blood relative, his only close relative … his brother. And he had only thought how useless the drunkard had been.

  … ‘Don’t be cru-u-el to a heart that’s true …’

  He turned his head to the heavily barred window. For the first time in years, hot tears trickle down his cheek.

  ‘Here, broh,’ said the white man recently separated from his own brother for many years – even a brother that had probably betrayed him in the end – ‘have a smoke,’ he says gently.

  For sometimes it is the smallest thing that can bring comfort. They both knew that.

  Glossary

  coodah

  brother

  Gnummerai-wa

  Do you have a cigarette?

  kwon

  arse

  ngooni

  brother

  Nyoongah

  Aboriginal people of south-west Australia

  Unna isn’t it?

  Is that true?

  wadjela

  white person

  The Release

  Samuel Wagan Watson

  Samuel Wagan Watson is an award-winning Indigenous poet of Munanjali, Birri Gubba, German and Irish descent. Samuel’s fourth poetry collection, Smoke Encrypted Whispers, won the 2005 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Book of the Year and the Kenneth Slessor Prize. He has been a writer in residence at a number of institutions and has toured New Zealand, Germany and Norway to promote his work.

  Danny and Bull … Bull and Danny.

  Some final splinters of sunlight jagged the hilltops on the western rises before them. Danny drove. The petrol gauge read half a tank. He and his cousin Bull would never have been ca
ught dead in these remnants of day when they were kids. Elders had warned of red-eyes appearing on the edge of the unsealed road; meandering spectres making their journeys to haunt, claiming unpaid debts from the living. Bull rode in the passenger seat of the car. Danny had promised Bull’s mother that they’d be home by dusk.

  The sedan was reasonably new and slick; slick for this region anyway, carrying two dark passengers up the winding roads of the big valley that coursed west from River City. Danny couldn’t help feeling like a black wraith moving through the numerous ghost towns on the back roads towards Murgon. As the pair climbed into the ranges the sentinels of Bunya Pine became more prominent; Black Cockatoo country.

  ‘You wanna stop ’ere in Fernvale … Get a sixpack for the drive?’

  Danny had heard that wayward anticipation in his cousin’s voice. ‘Nah … I promised your mother, Bull …’

  The vehicle had already drawn stares from night owls. There were no ‘Welcome’ mats in these tiny communities. A blackfulla from the city knew this in his blood. The people out here had a gentle way as they moved. Arthritic hate. A bent neck that eased an arch at strangers.

  A flatland of shadows unfolded out of gumtrees and thicket. Danny smelt the familiarity of lavender farms. ‘We’re almost there, Bull.’

  His cousin had been quite subdued along the trip. Even when they passed Wacol and the prison where Bull had been a ‘guest’, the energy in the car was flat. There was nothing Danny wanted to say anyway. Some of the bricks had fallen down from the childhood bond the men had built together. Danny chose the city. Bull earned a cracked pelvis on the rodeo circuit. Bull found it hard to even ride a lawnmower after that. Then the broken cowboy consumed painkillers to chase the hurt. Alcohol … Heroin … Chapters in custodial detention.

  Danny finally eased the car into Murgon. The suspension clapped over the dormant train crossing. White folk kept to their pub on the left. The black folk knew their place across the way. A solitary statue of an Anzac held residence in the main-street division. Danny looked over his shoulder briefly thinking he might see the lights of Cherbourg Mission behind the township, but there wasn’t even a firefly’s chance. Out of mind, out of sight. Some traffic loomed. A couple of dark faces checked up from their drinks. This was a bubble that would take decades to deflate and decolonise.