Sink: Old Man's Tale (2 page)

Mr. Pearson waved his arm at the empty space of the Outback around them.

“This will all be prime development land,” he said. “Over one hundred acres. Worth millions once it’s developed. Breathe it in, lads. Breathe it in. Can you smell it?”

“Yeah,” Graham said, coughing and clearing his lungs. “Dust.”

“It’s not dust,” Mr. Pearson said. “Dwayne, tell him what you smell.”

“Money, sir,” Dwayne said. “Redevelopment money.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Pearson said. “See? Dwayne here, he’s got the nose. That’s something they can’t teach.”

Larapinta had fallen within the growing suburbs of Alice Springs, an up-and-coming area, and provided a unique opportunity for forward-thinking investors.

When looking at the plans for the properties around the area, it would have all been colored green – green for the land Righteous Brothers had bought, with a single small rectangle of red slap-bang in the middle of it. Mr. Witness’s property. A pimple on the face of something with the potential to be beautiful. They were going to build there anyway, but they would prefer to do it without the need to build around Jeremiah, and so they had put in the paperwork to have Mr. Witness forcibly removed. But before they could do that they had to hand him the order in person. If he acquiesced, or was friendly with their demands, it could help the process move swiftly.

Mr. Pearson took a step toward the house. His foot sank into a recess in the soil.

“Damn moles,” he said, kicking the dirt off his shiny black shoes. “They dig under the surface and the land gives way. They should all be shot.”

They climbed the dusty steps to the porch. It creaked beneath their feet. They had to play a game of hopscotch over the holes to get to the door. There was a thick crack that rose from the steps to halfway up the wall.

“The place is falling apart,” Mr. Pearson said. “We’re doing him a favor taking it off his hands before it falls on his head.”

He straightened his jacket, checked his hair, put on his best smile, and then knocked on the door.

Visitors.
Jeremiah’s top lip curled into a sneer. Visitors were uninvited guests who assumed the rules of trespassing didn’t apply to them. They were mistaken. Jeremiah hated the arrogance of people. Bringing their fat useless bodies to his property. Knocking on his front door. They always wanted something, even if on the face of it they wanted to give. People did things for themselves, to make themselves feel good or show they cared. Everyone was selling something.

There were those who openly tried to sell things. At least they were honest about it. Whether it was insurance; “Hey, he’s an old fart. Let’s try to squeeze as much money out of him as we can!” Or Bible bashers, come to shovel their shit in his ears. At the beginning they would come with cheery happy smiles, come to spread the word of their Lord and Savior. Well, Jeremiah didn’t need saving. He didn’t need their Lord. All the belief he needed was in his shotgun, which he kept by the door for such occasions. They soon prayed for their Lord and Savior then.

Then came the girl scouts with their so-called delicious ‘home-made’ cookies. Well, they didn’t look delicious to him. How delicious could they be if they were made by young hands? Jeremiah was not a precious man. He cared only about the result, the finished product, and he had looked at their little blank boxes of tasteless products and found them wanting. Were the girl scouts raising awareness and funds for a very worthy cause? Probably. Did Jeremiah care? Not in the slightest. He believed in getting quantity, and then quality, from anything he bought. And always at a better-than-reasonable price.

And then came the worst of the worst. Property developers. More like property destroyers. They came with money and promises, shit-eating grins, and fancy cars designed to intimidate. But Jeremiah wasn’t the type to be so easily intimidated. A car was something to get you from A to B, anything else was wasteful showing off and he had no use for it. They shoveled shit and called it gold.

Jeremiah peered through the peephole now, watching as the fat twit preened what little hair he had on his head.

Jeremiah reached for his gun, and then hesitated. The last thing he needed was for them, or, more importantly, the courts, to think he was a raving gun-wielding lunatic whenever someone came to the door. He’d had a bad experience of that with the Bible bashers. But at least everyone secretly knew the Bible bashers had to be crazier than him to be doing that they were doing.

Jeremiah opened the door, getting an eyeful of the fat fool and his two cronies, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, at either shoulder.

“Good afternoon,” Fatty said. “My name is Mr. Pearson, from Righteous Brothers. That’s the property development company, not the singers.”

He chuckled to himself as if this was the first time he’d ever uttered the incredibly feeble joke.

“I’m here to make sure you got our notifications about the opportunity to develop your property,” Fatty said.

Jeremiah didn’t let him get any further. He unleashed a tirade on the hapless fools, opening the floodgates, letting rip and shouting at them as loud as his old voice would allow. He wasn’t even sure what he was saying, except that he made sure to slip plenty of offensive words in there. People were always surprised when an old person swore. Well, these fools wouldn’t be after this afternoon.

After what Jeremiah deemed an appropriate length of time, he quietened down. The three men stood there, blinking, like they couldn’t believe what they’d just seen.

Fatty straightened his clothes.

“Did you receive our letters?” he said calmly.

“Yes, I got your stinking letters,” Jeremiah said. “And I took great pleasure in burning them.”

There was a flicker behind one of the stooge’s eyes. As quickly as it came, it was gone.

Fatty calmly took an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and offered it to him. Jeremiah backed away from the letter like it contained the plague, turned, and slammed the door in Fatty’s face. It came so close to his nose he rocked slightly back on his heels.

“We’re going to get your property, Mr. Witness,” Fatty said on the other side of the door. “It’s only a matter of time. You’re better served accepting our proposal or risk losing out on the offer of a lifetime.”

The envelope slid under the door. Jeremiah ignored it.

“We tried,” Fatty said. “Let’s get back to town. I’m going to need a tetanus shot.”

The sight of
the old man had made Graham start. At first he thought they must have gotten the wrong address, or Jeremiah had moved without informing them. This man could clearly not have been the Jeremiah he knew from childhood. And yet, there was a likeness there, a familiarity with the shape of the face and eyes. The features had fallen, become soft and haggard, his ears had doubled in size, and though he could never have been described as a handsome man, now Jeremiah looked like an extra from a Lord of the Rings film.

And when he opened his mouth, curved and round like a creature from a horror story, his eyes wide, bloodshot and yellowed, a spring of profanity escaped the likes of which Graham had never heard. He screamed and shouted at them in heavily nuanced words that even Graham, with a background in this area, couldn’t understand. And once he was finished, Mr. Pearson had smiled as if Mr. Witness hadn’t spoken at all, and dealt the deciding blow.

Graham would have shaken his head if he’d had the nerve. When Jeremiah admitted he’d indeed received their letters, the old man had unknowingly signed his death warrant. That was the greatest weapon in the property developer’s arsenal: ignorance.

It wasn’t even really their fault. People tended to concentrate on learning what affected them in their daily lives rather than things they found boring or tedious. The law was something people generally followed, not studied. If they had, they would have discovered a world not of black and white, but of the greys of a million different hues. By confirming he had received the letters, the old man had also confirmed he had taken no action. He was at the court’s mercy, and it most likely would not be in his favor.

Mr. Pearson slowed the car at the junction that joined the motorway. The car stopped.

“Get out,” Mr. Pearson said.

For a moment, Graham wasn’t sure who he was talking to.

“Me?” Graham said.

“Of course you,” Mr. Pearson said.

“What for?” Graham said.

“These are your people,” Mr. Pearson said. “It’s your job to convince him to hand his property over to us.”

“But he told us he received the letters,” Graham said. “We can hang him with that.”

“We’ll need to go through the courts,” Mr. Pearson said. “We need faster results.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Graham said. “He won’t listen to me.”

“Then make him listen to you,” Mr. Pearson said. “And don’t bother coming back until you have those deeds.”

“Possessing the deeds doesn’t make us the property owners,” Graham said.

“No, but dear old Mr. Witness neglected to register his property with the authorities,” Mr. Pearson said. “Without the deeds he’ll have a harder time proving he’s the owner. The perfect time for us to take it from him.”

“You can’t do this,” Graham said.

“No?” Mr. Pearson said. “That’s funny. I think I just did.”

Mr. Pearson was serious. Graham looked to Dwayne, but he was looking away. Graham hesitated before getting out of the car.

“Dwayne, join me upfront,” Mr. Pearson said.

Dwayne got out and sat in the front passenger seat. His kept his eyes on the ground, pointedly not looking at Graham.

“You know I don’t like you,” Mr. Pearson said to Graham. “Why else did you think I brought you on this trip?”

He hit the gas and the wheels spun, kicking up dust, coating Graham. He coughed and watched as the car pulled away and disappeared over the horizon. He listened to the jabberings of the crickets and grasshoppers in the undergrowth before pulling his head back and letting out a scream. He kicked at a tuft of grass, swearing, performing a reenactment of Jeremiah’s tirade.

The motorway was silent, the way it often was in Australia. There were no cars and the chances of hitching a lift were significantly less than the possibility of getting bitten by a poisonous snake, even after his boss had cleared the way.

He turned to look back at the dusty road that led back to Jeremiah’s house. Jeremiah had a car. Maybe he could get a lift. He almost laughed. Maybe he could borrow Jeremiah’s car, just to town, and then call the cops and let them know where the car was so the old man could get it back. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Graham walked up the road toward Jeremiah’s house. He turned the puzzle of the deeds over in his mind. How would he get them? Could he get them without the old man knowing?

Graham paused. He shook his head. He never even questioned whether or not he would try to get them, only
how
to get them. Mr. Pearson was an asshole, a bigot, a sexist, and arrogant beyond belief, but he sure was a formidable judge of character.

The kettle
whistled, a high-pitched whine that would have made Jeremiah’s ears hurt, except he was too busy looking out the kitchen window at his back garden to notice. The muscles in his arms were tight. He was still bubbling with rage. He shook his head. What gave them the right to try and take his home away? It was all he had. And suddenly he felt weak and tired to his bones.

Something wet pressed against his forehead. He reached up and touched it. His fingertips came away damp, and when he turned, he saw the kettle was still bubbling away. He switched the hob off and poured the hot water into his single chipped cup. There was just a dribble left. He refilled the kettle and boiled it again. His mind wandered. He became calm, but resolute. He would not let them take his house away from him. Ever.

He opened the fridge door. Seven plates sat on the shelves. Five had identical sandwiches on them. Two were empty. It must have been a Wednesday. He ate the same corned beef sandwiches every day. He’d gotten sick of them a long time since, but when he thought about what else he had to eat and the effort it would take to make something new, he gave up. An engine needed fuel. It didn’t matter the quality. His taste buds had long since given out, so he couldn’t taste the food anyway. That was his life. Tasteless. Without flavor.

The only real interior design he had were model airplanes hanging from the ceiling on metal wires, in the midst of a dogfight. The planes were German Messerschmitts and British Spitfires, a reenactment of the Battle of Britain, to Jeremiah’s eye the most important battle of the twentieth century.

Jeremiah picked up a photograph frame and touched the glass. The final few dregs of pent-up aggression left him. A smile came to his lips. Those were good times. He caught sight of his reflection, of the deep ridges in his forehead. He angled the frame away so he couldn’t see himself.

He looked through the dirty kitchen window again at the eucalyptus tree perched on the far corner of his property. It stretched for the sky, its foliage bent to one side by the harsh winds, looking like something that belonged in a Poe poem.