Born Into This by Adam Thompson

Author:Adam Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2020-12-11T03:15:53+00:00

BLACK EYE

I lay awake last night, thinking about the worst thing I’ve ever done. The memory came on a tide of negative thoughts. This happens to alcoholics. Regularly. Some call it ‘alcohol anxiety’ or the ‘grog demons’. To me and to other blackfellas I know, it’s the ‘black eye’. I can’t decide if it’s a blessing or a curse that our brain tries to make life bearable, for a time, by suppressing all the bad stuff. All I know is that when we’re back in the gutter – when things go to shit – it all comes flooding back. Yeah, that black eye is a real bitch.

Now, the worst thing I have ever done.

A big statement, I know, for a fifty-year-old man who has lived a full life. And there’s plenty who’d give you a different opinion about what my ‘worst thing’ was. But what’s it matter what they think, right? I’m the one who has to live with it.

I blame Hardo, partly. It was his gun, after all.

‘Check this baby out,’ he said, with a roguish grin, as he unrolled the oily rag from where he’d hidden it in his swag. There’s no way they’d have let him on the boat knowing he had a gun. It was an air rifle – .177 calibre – with a barrel so bent it was like it had an elbow. The steel of the gun was orange with rust and the wooden stock was gouged and splintery. It was the most busted-arse gun I had ever seen, and I strongly doubted it could even fire.

It was Hardo’s first stint on Woody Island. He arrived a day earlier with three other blackfellas rounded up in Launceston by a Landcare group who had money to employ Aboriginal people. They were promised a few weeks’ work on the islands, cutting and spraying weeds. Truth be told, I was glad for the company. I’d been on the job for over a month. Just me and a lazy bastard, Mansell. We were always at it – me and Mansell – because he was such a bludger. By the time the others came, we hadn’t spoken for days. In my eyes, Hardo seemed the least promising worker of the bunch. He was the youngest of the new guys, straight black hair, combed back with product. A real city slicker. Built like he hadn’t done a stitch of physical work in his life. Completely out of place on the islands. I put fifty mental dollars on him being the first to get shitcanned.

I was conscious of my age, thirty-seven at that time, which I felt was old for having my first run as supervisor. So I took things pretty seriously. As soon as those boys jumped off the boat, I gauged their worth as labourers. I planned on working them hard, you see. Hardo looked hungover. He winced as he collected his pack and swag. As he trekked the rough track to the work hut, he spewed in the long grass.

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