Free The Windy Season by Sam Carmody Page A

and bucket across the concrete towards him. He didn’t look, but Paul could sense the men were watching them. Kasia looked up, her eyes square on his as she drew the mop from the water, wringing it out against the wire arms of the bucket. The bleach drifted hot from the floor and bit deep in his nostrils. He noticed the lightness of her blue eyes. They were almost fluorescent against her dark hair and the brown of her skin. The girl raised her eyebrows comically at his staring, and he willed himself to say something to her.
    Hey, fuckwit, take a photo, a voice boomed from the other end of the room.
    Kasia looked down at the mop head and he saw her smile.
    I said hey fuckwit, the voice came again, louder.
    Paul looked searchingly up at Michael.
    The German winked at him. You should be going, he said.

Deadman
    ON MONDAY AFTERNOON HE SAW DEADMAN moored in the inlet. It was where Michael had said it would be, away from the other boats, where the inlet hooked into the cover of the rivergums and sandstone gorge.
    Paul went there alone, as soon as he and Michael had loaded the crays into the freezer truck on the jetty. He didn’t tell Michael where he was going. He knew it wouldn’t make much sense. He walked along the beach of the inlet, below the tavern beer garden. Beyond the town the beach narrowed to a thin bank, and the beach sand gave way to firmly packed clay. He felt the breeze, confused in the mouth of the gorge, as if trying to turn back towards the sea.
    The boat was moored in shallow water, the river dark red with tannin. Deadman flew two Stark Vikings football club flags, the black cotton stressed and frayed. A sheep’s horned skull was tied to the bow rail, sun-yellowed.
    He stood there for fifteen minutes, boots in the river mud, just watching.
    Three afternoons in a row, when Arcadia had returned to Stark, Paul did the same thing. Walked into the shadow of the river, watched Deadman . There was no sign it had left its mooring. Nothing had been moved on deck.
    On the fourth day, Deadman was gone.

    Every night out in that desert I listen to the President while he has those bad dreams. The big fella grunts like he is dying, makes sounds like he is crying. When I say his name he doesn’t wake but he stops for a while.
    He kicks about when he sleeps too. Kicks his sleeping bag right off him every night so it is just his big tattooed body lying there with the desert air on him. Somehow it doesn’t ever wake the two old generals he brought with him. They both sleep heavy after a day’s riding but I can’t sleep a second with him doing all that kicking and crying business. Out in this flat country in the dark before morning it is below zero and could kill even a fella as big as the President and sometimes I get up and lay the sleeping bag back on him. His face is all scrunched up like a white-bearded baby under the moonlight. Shivering and grunting. It is a weird thing to see an old fella looking like that and I don’t know how it makes me feel.
    One thing I do know is that it is hard to sleep easy when you are as heavy as the President. I tell him that he is an unhealthy man and he just says, Swiss, you mind your own business.
    I tell him it is a miracle how fat he is when out here nothing much is moving around more than bone and tendons and furexcept for the President. I tell him he is the exception to every rule out in the flat country. I can tell him these things and he seems to take it okay and plus he knows it’s true. We been in the desert five days but the President can sniff out a jam doughnut from two hundred kilometres. Anytime we get near enough to a town or a roadhouse he sends me in to get fuel and food and water and I know if I want to keep the peace I won’t forget those jam doughnuts. Half a dozen of them. He likes Wagon Wheels too if they got them. He drinks chocolate milk like it is keeping him alive and I reckon he has got chocolate milk running through his veins. I get that mean look in