Brown Skin Blue (7 page)

Three more facts. Crocodile attacks.

Three things in common:

I've got the napkin in my fist. Held tight and crushed into a ball. I'm on a bus heading out of Humpty Doo towards Darwin. I'm in a cage with windows and wheels at two dollars fifty a ride. And everywhere around me there could be fathers. Predators. Paedophiles. I
know
there's not. But fear says otherwise.

I'm mad with Sally. And Bessy. They've got no right butting in on my life. But every time I think of Sally I love the way she looks. I remember the way she felt. But a panic rises at the same time. I don't want to find Teabag Jones. I don't want to have to knock on his door and tell him who I am. The dark-skinned bastard of Dolly Mundy.
Who are ya, boy?
I can see him saying to me. That's if he doesn't shut the door in my face straight away.
Me: serious, dark, dirty.
His skin will be dark. But he could be anyone. And he probably won't even remember his shag with Dolly. Bloody hell, I don't know how she even remembered who they were. How could she remember one bloke from another?

I think about the crocs in the river and even though they all might look the same to a stranger, we can tell them apart, no worries. Maybe it's like that with women and the men they sleep with. Maybe my mum made all the names up. Just to give me something before I left. Any name'll do. I wonder if his eyes got her like they got Bessy.

After I'd finished my breakfast, the smell of stale beer and cigarettes and frying bacon fat started my stomach turning. I had to get out of there. When I saw the bus coming down the road, I grabbed my bag and the napkin and hopped in.

I don't know where I'm going and I don't care. But I'm still hungry. This time I want something sweet.

The bus stops at the shopping centre. I think it's as good a place as any and I get out.

I'm walking though the shops and it's almost overwhelming. So many colours, lights, sounds, people. It's enough to do my head in. Everything for sale: vacuum cleaners, DVD players, fruit, socks, shampoo. There's a display in the centre of the walkway with cardboard sheets of kids' projects pinned onto display boards.
Australian Pearling History. Legends of our Past. Divers of the Deep.
There are ice-cream stick models of boats and larger constructions made out of empty cardboard boxes and string and they're resting on a sea of blue crepe paper. I stop and read them for a while but I'm joined by strangers, and I don't like the feeling. I don't like crowded places. I like being on me own. I need space around me. That's why I like the bush. That's why I like working at the Crocs. The river and bush all around. The smell of eucalyptus and damp soil in the humidity. Knowing everything has roots and places. I don't even mind the tourists. They only arrive in groups, see what they came to see, then leave. There's a timetable for people there.

Donut King stands like a beacon in the middle of the shopping centre. Bright-pink-neon, sugar-coated, gut-rotting sweet stuff. It's just what I need.

‘I'll have a dozen cinnamon ones, thanks. And a coffee. Black. No sugar.'

A smile looks right on a girl in a Donut King uniform. Lolly pink and gummy.

I shove the first donut in my mouth. It goes down easy with the coffee to chase the sugar. I hold the next one in my hand. All of a sudden I can see the aniseed rings in my hand. The small, black, dirty rings. It's no matter the donut is fat and white, they're both round and covered in sugar. And for a minute, even though I know it's nonsense, I feel the black aniseed racing through my blood. Turning my white skin to brown. And the sugar tastes so good, I don't even know what's happening. It's McNabm Blue's filth that turned me dark. My father had nothin' to do with it.

I should buy a bottle of water and wash it away. Throw the rest in the bin and dust my fingers on my strides. But I'm hating myself anyway, so I eat two more and lick my fingers clean. And when they're clean, I lick them again. And it feels like Bait that's licking me and it's so awful I can't stop. The rest of the donuts get squashed in my bag.

I'm wearing my boots, even though it's Saturday, and they are a comfort to me. I don't know why. I could kick anything that comes my way to buggery. I could lay into someone and not stop and not even hurt my toes. I'm proud of my boots. I can walk tall. They make me feel like a man and sometimes the feeling of something is all that really matters anyway. I'm reminded of it each time I put one foot in front of the other.

I'm back on the bus. It stops outside the Crocodile Zoo. I don't want to stay on the bus any more, so I get off. For one day I want to be a tourist. I want to look at everything as if it's a fuckin' mystery and I'm in wonder to behold it. I want to buy some expensive souvenir and put it on the fridge in my room. I want to look at something and say, ‘I've been there' without having to hide it under my pillow or the back of my mind. I want to have something I can show people other than just being able to hypnotise a bloody chook. It occurs to me with all this stupid thinkin' that I want something. But I've really got no bloody clue what that is, so I just want something I can have. And it doesn't much matter what.

Great. I've missed the tour. The woman, who takes my money at the checkout, says I can just wander through myself.

‘There's signs all around the place,' she says. ‘It's all there in black and white. Take as much time as you like.' She's chewing gum and her skin looks like my own mum's. Turning to leather in the sun. Her hair is orange on the ends and a yellowy-grey at the roots. Women show their age that way like ring barks on tree. Peel away the colour and you can't hide exactly how old you are.

I take a quick glance at the souvenir shop behind the café counter. Lots of shit I could buy. In fact, I could decorate my entire room. Hats, boomerangs, mugs, stubby holders, squeaky toys, stuffed toys, fridge magnets, wallets, key chains and tea towels. I decide to leave my shopping for the end and visit the zoo first.

Through the turnstiles, there's a long walkway that sits high up over the rest of the park. Grey metal railings line the path. It's long and I can see a ramp leading down to the rest of the park at the other end. But this is where it all starts. With the crocs.

Crocodile Zoo has a lot to interest the tourist. Tigers, monkeys, turtles, birds, snakes – the usual assortment of caged zoo animals – but the main thing people come to see here are the crocs. It might be called a ‘zoo', but this place is a farm. A crocodile farm. Leather and meat. Crocs are now an international market boom-trade.

The male crocs are below me. There's heaps of them in little rectangular pens side by side. The first croc I see is huge. Fat and slovenly. The males are kept separate and let into the mating pools when the farm needs a new batch. I'm walking slowly, and there's croc after croc after croc. A numbing, grotesque feeling creeps over me. None of them have moved. At all. Not even a paw, a claw, a jaw. Crocs can slow their heart rates down to survive. Like a reptilian hibernation. They look like that now, not real. They don't even look scary. They look sad. They look more fake than Shelby in his orange boxing gloves.

I'm suddenly heavy in my guts. This isn't what I came for. It's not what I wanted or expected. I wanted the horror and the shock. I wanted to be one of those tourists on our boats that can't keep their eyes from bulging out of their heads. I want to feel my heart beating so fast I know I'm alive. I want to be surprised.

I keep walking with my eyes fixed on every croc. I walk down the ramp and there are different pens. There are
giant turtles. Slow and ploddy. There's a keeper in with them, cleaning out their pen. He lifts the turtles up one at a time by gripping them under the top parts of their shells. He puts them close together in one pen while the water drains out of the concrete bath through a large drain in the middle. Further along, another pen is slowly filling with clean water. It's amazing how much looking after animals require when you take them out of their natural habitat. There'd be no one to change their water out in the wild. They'd have to make do or move somewhere else.

Further along the path are more enclosures with small pools in the centres and concrete rims around the edges for the crocs at different stages of growth.

There must be five pens with the little crocs. Fully formed and about a metre long. There are so many crocs in one pen I can't even count them. At least three hundred, I'd guess. They're all just lying around, layered up over each other. Almost completely covering the ground. It's sickening. I saw a cockroach infestation once. Layers and layers of the bastards so thick you'd sink to your ankles if you walked through them. That's what the crocs look like. Only they're still, unmoving, for the most part. It goes on and on. More and more pens with crocs of different sizes completely filling the pens. Lying in the sun to warm their blood.

I've come to the back of the tour group. The guide is standing at the end of the path in front of a tropical fern garden with a group of people around him. I can hear him talking. He's holding up a little croc, only the length of his arm.

‘Now these little fellas are really fragile. Don't get me wrong they're strong. Their body is like one powerful muscle. So when you hold 'im, he might wriggle and you'll feel 'im, but he can't hurt you. But they're only little, and if you drop one, you'll injure him. Break his bones or rip his nose. Nasty stuff. I had one little fella broke his jaw this morning 'cause a kid dropped 'im. Don't want to see that again.'

Now I'm fascinated. It's the thought of a huge predatory monster existing in the fragile form of a little body. All the potential for violence inside it. All it needs is time to expand. Except with this little bloke he'll be some lady's handbag before he gets a chance to take her leg.

We're standing on the path between cages of monkeys and birds. Behind me, back up the way a little in the middle of the path, is a small ice-cream shop. Windows open on both sides. There are monkeys clinging to the bars of their cages. Next to them and behind them are the pens of crocs. It's suddenly a sad sight. All these wild things in cages where they can be looked at, prodded and poked, trained and fed and watched. I could buy an ice-cream, sit on a seat and watch them all day.

The image of Blue comes to me. Trapped behind the bars in the big prison. A fat, hungry, male predator caught and contained. Hanging on the bars as people parade past to get a look at him. He's not scary to look at behind the bars. He's like the first big croc on the walkway up top. Just a pathetic thing that was only in his element in the wild. Where he could prey and sweet-stalk his victims. I feel sad for him. Blue, that is. Locked up. Another thing I know is stupid, but I
think it all the same. It was me that put him there. Caught and caged him like an animal. I left him no option but to hang himself. I hate myself for thinkin' this way, but it takes this bitter feeling I've got hangin' around inside me and squashes it, like Mylanta settles indigestion. I feel better when the rage is flattened into a pool of sadness down deep. I'd dive right in, if I could.

‘So. Who's gonna hold the little fella, then?' The guide holds up the little croc and smiles. He's black. Aboriginal black. I can tell by his face. Angular cheekbones and wide eye sockets. I want to be him. He looks happy and free and home amongst it all. I like him. I want to ask him what he thinks of his skin.

‘Come on. Don't be shy.'

There's a few kids in the front hustling each other, but no one wants to step forward. I'm pushing through the crowd, I'm lookin' right at him and my hand is in the air. ‘I'll have a go, mate,' I say. I have no idea why, but I have to hold it.

‘Remember what I said, okay.' He holds the croc towards me. ‘Get a good grip and don't let go. He'll wriggle. It'll take you by surprise, but don't let 'im go.'

I nod. I know what to do. He's passed over in my hands and I've got one fist around his tail, one up around near his neck. He's stronger than he looked. He's cold and strange and limp. Then all of a sudden the tail thrashes and my heart is racing. I move, but I don't let go.

‘Wooo,' the guide says and he's smiling, reaching over just in case I freak out.

I have this overwhelming feeling of power. If I let go I could hurt it real bad. I could squeeze and make it suffocate. I could hurl it through the bushes, into the big croc pens, and they'd snap him up like an entree. I'm no match for a croc my own size, but I could take my revenge on something that would grow up to be one. I could get in first, so to speak. For a second the urge is strong. I hold it out to the guide and he takes it, careful like. I can tell he takes good care of them. I push my way back through the crowd, wiping my hands on my pants. It's almost as bad as Bait lick.

I've held out till Saturday night. But I can't control it any more. I'm lookin' around my room at the boomerang, didgeridoo, three tea towels, two stuffed crocodiles and five fridge magnets with my hand on my cock in the late orange light. I imagine Sally on top of me, but my mind puts bars around her. And when it's over, quickly, all I can feel is the little croc in my hands. Slippery. Small. Wet.