We gotta move on, Kes said. They’ll kill you if you stay.
As he leant down to drag Darky Gardiner to his feet, Kes heard a guttural cry and to his horror saw the Goanna striding quickly back down the path. The guard shoved Kes aside, kicked Gardiner again and, yelling, Byoki house, byoki house, pointed down the track in the direction of the camp. Even in his delirious state, the prisoner seemed to find it hard to believe such a thing.
Byoki house? Darky Gardiner gasped, disbelieving, repeating the camp pidgin for hospital.
Byoki house! the Goanna yelled again and gave him another kick to emphasise the point.
With what energy he could summon, Darky Gardiner pulled himself to his knees and hands, and like a weary dog turned around and started to crawl back to camp before the guard changed his mind. Kes began quickly marching in the opposite direction, heading to the railway cutting. The Goanna sprinted past him to catch up with the visiting colonel. When he disappeared out of sight, Kes halted.
He watched in wonderment as his left leg went into a violent spasm for no reason, jumping about as if wired into a power line. And then his body shuddered uncontrollably for some minutes, a violent and wild shaking. Finally it ceased, and he was able to resume walking to the Line.
16
IT WAS JUST after midday, Shugs had eaten his filthy grey rice ball for lunch and was on his way to the cookhouse in order to scrounge another kerosene tin boiler to fit into the broken still. He was also hoping that a cook might give him some peelings or rice scrapings.
Shugs was a lot older than most, maybe close to thirty even, and his eyes, which reminded everyone of overflowing ash trays, coupled to his odd, taciturn nature, made some suspect he was touched. He had been a trapper before the war, a nomad of the Tasmanian high country, and he carried nothing, not even a kitbag. The first time he had worn underwear was when he enlisted and received two pairs as part of his uniform issue. He had never got over the luxury of army life, the exoticism of which was summed up by the recipe book he had won in a game of pontoon in Java. Shugs said he’d been dreaming of a recipe of Mrs Beeton’s for pork roulade when he came upon Darky Gardiner, collapsed in mud in the middle of the parade ground.
Christ knows how he made it back down the Dolly, Shugs told some of the other POWs later. But he did.
They wondered too how Darky Gardiner did it on his hands and knees, up and over the rocks and roots, through the mud and the puddles, down the cliff, and they feigned astonishment, which was really fear, because next day, next week it might be one of them, and they would just have to find within themselves whatever Darky Gardiner had.
His guts had gone on him completely and he was covered in shit, poor bugger, Shugs told them. I guess he just crawled up and down that miserable fucken track squirting away shit everywhere.
Shugs had their attention.
Poor fucken bugger, bugger me, you wouldn’t know how bloody long he had bloody well been there. He was all away with fever like a wormy leaf on a windy day. I thought he was dead. He looked that fucken awful. Then I could see he was breathing. I thought, I just want to get him out of sight of any Jap, because even if you’re dead you’re still skiving to a Jap if you’re not on the bloody sick lists. I got him up, this shitty skeleton, and he’s leaning on me and me him, half-staggering, half-dragging Darky like a dirty old busted broom over to the bamboo showers. Got some water, got some rag, washed him down, cleaned him up, I washed his face, I cleaned his filthy arse.
They could see Shugs standing Darky up under the bamboo shower. They knew how awkward it would have been, the two naked men like two trees collapsed on each other. They could see that stream of water falling from the bamboo piping they had run back from the creek, Shugs saying, It’s good to be clean, cobs. They could see Darky flopping around in Shugs’ arms everywhere. They could see the water running like roots over the holes of Darky’s shoulders and his chicken-ribbed chest, Shugs saying, Get that fucken stink off you and out of you. And they wondered if any of them had half the decency of the foul-mouthed, half-mad Shugs.
Shugs told them how Darky came-to a bit when the Big Fella’s 2IC, Squizzy Taylor, with his gangster dash and not a touch of the hard man about him, arrived, and Darky told him about how the Jap officer went to behead him but didn’t, and how the Goanna then sent him back.
You can never accuse the Japs of consistency, Squizzy Taylor says, shaking his big gangster head, and he holds out his gangster hands and begins to examine him. By this time Darky’s making no sense, Shugs went on, and he’s rabbiting on about how before the war he used to take his missus to Nikitaris’s fish shop in North Hobart for a feed of fish and chips. Goes on about how he can’t stop thinking about the fish that used to swim around in the big tank in the shop window. Flathead and mullet and blackback salmon. Nothing special, says Darky, as Squizzy prods him a bit, lifts his eyelid a tadge, taps his chest, all the doctor bizzo.