Highway 13 by Fiona McFarlane

Author:Fiona McFarlane [Fiona McFarlane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2024-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

DEMOCRACY SAUSAGE

(1998)

Because Australians are incapable of fulfilling their legal obligation to participate in the democratic process without also being given the opportunity to purchase and consume a sausage sandwich, this woman has asked me, politely but with conviction, to burn a sausage for her—burn it black, she said—so that’s what I’m doing, carefully and affably, here at the barbecue on election day in the school grounds, wearing my apron that reads What’s the Biga Idea?, and which I thought, up until approximately two hours ago, I might have to wear backwards, because the name ‘Biga’ has, in the last four days, become an appalling liability, the kind of one-in-a-million piece of bad luck that not even the sharpest campaign manager could plan for, not even Celeste, but she’s come through, as she tends to, in her pointy way, and I’m wearing the apron as God and Celeste intended, slogan visible, and also a badge in campaign colours that says NO RELATION, which is true, as far as I know—as far as it’s possible to know exactly who might or might not be related to, for example, a grandfather who emigrated from Poland but never spoke about it, preferred to keep quiet about any brothers or cousins or uncles, preferred in fact to keep quiet about almost everything and just sit in a stained velour armchair inhaling incessant smoke into his lungs, which were already scarred by the pneumonia he contracted while building dams in midwinter in the Murray–Darling Basin, and who is now more tight-lipped than ever, being dead—so yes, this Biga that everyone’s talking about, this Biga who’s just been arrested for multiple horrific murders, could possibly be a distant cousin, but as far as I know, and my parents know, and Celeste knows, and my wife and children know, he truly is NO RELATION, although something about this woman’s tapping foot suggests that she isn’t entirely convinced, this woman in the sixty-plus age bracket who’s asked for the burnt sausage, which I think she’s planning to feed to the dog she has with her, itself a low sausage, name of Roger, whose eyes are so framed by oversized ears that he must see the world as if peeping through hanging laundry, and who I imagine would prefer a nice, plump, pink snag, though obviously I won’t say so, because the customer is always right, just as the voter is always right, unless they’re voting for the other party, which she may be, this woman—voting for another party, I mean, since with her undyed hair and hippie sandals she doesn’t look like what Celeste calls a ‘core vote’, the ones who are mine to lose, whose simple needs feed the simple themes of a strong campaign, who all shop in the same two places and drive all-terrain vehicles in suburbia, whereas this woman looks like a greenie, but I probably only think so because the chain on her glasses reminds me of Mum, who in retirement has joined Greenpeace

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