You're Never The Same

1‘Vinny, it’s Trisha.’ Dr Vincent Hanrahan was twenty minutes behind and about to call in his next patient. Vince never answered his mobile when he was consulting but he knew this call must be important. His sister wouldn’t ring him mid-morning on a weekday just to say hi. ‘I’m up home,’ she went on, her voice strained. ‘Joey’s missing. He’s not with you, is he?’ ‘No, Trish. He’s not down here. What’s the story?’ ‘He was supposed to come into Horsham on Monday night to spend New Year’s Eve with Jane and the kids, but he didn’t turn up. So Jane came out to the farm yesterday and found no sign of him and the dogs are still here and Uncle Jack and Aunty Margaret and the neighbours haven’t seen him and—’ ‘Steady on, sis,’ Vince said as Trisha’s words tumbled out in an urgent torrent. ‘He could be anywhere. Maybe he’s gone fishing with his mates.’ ‘He hasn’t taken his car, and his camping and fishing gear are all here. The ute’s still in the garage.’ Bloody strange. ‘Has he finished the harvest already?’ There was a pause and a comment in the background. ‘Joey didn’t put in a summer crop this year.’ Must’ve decided to cut his losses, Vince reflected. ‘What about his clothes?’ He could hear further conversation. ‘Jane says nothing’s gone.’ Another pause. ‘She hasn’t heard from him since Christmas Day and he usually rings the kids every night.’ A destabilising wave of nausea passed through Vince’s body. ‘What about his motorbike, you know, the farm bike?’ He heard a volley of fading footsteps, then the back door banging. Vince pictured Trisha and Jane rushing out to the machinery shed, two hundred metres across the yard. A few minutes later, Trisha came back on the line. Panting. ‘The motorbike’s not there, Vinny. It’s gone!’ Vince frowned and looked at the appointment list on his computer screen—chockers. Too bad. ‘Hang on.’ He picked up his desk phone. ‘Lorraine, I’m taking the rest of the day off, maybe the week. I know, I know, so re-book some and see if Shirley or the Prez can see the rest. Can’t be helped. Family business. Yeah, I’ll let you know.’ Vince hung up and grabbed his mobile. ‘I’m on my way.’ He strode out through the crowded waiting room, jumped into his old Volvo, drove down to his modest dwelling in South Warrnambool, and threw a change of underwear and his toothbrush in a bag. He asked his next-door neighbour to look after his dog, filled up Benny’s tank at the servo, then headed out of town on the long road north. For most of the trip, despite the loud distractions of Courtney Barnett and Van Morrison, interspersed with snippets of Test match commentary, Vince’s mind oscillated between his little brother’s disappearance and his own fall from grace. Both topics unpleasant but inescapable. He had no awareness of passing through all the places on the way but was jolted out of his reverie as he approached Rupanyup, just twenty kilometres from his destination. He glanced at the dashboard clock—two and a half hours had vanished into the hot, dry Wimmera air. Without a trace. The small town, strung out in a long line either side of the split road, was at once both familiar and strange. Vince was back on home territory, but he wasn’t feeling at home. He glanced across instinctively at the pair of towering cement grain silos on the right. His mouth fell open. They now displayed huge monochrome spectral faces—a footballer and a netballer—with a sign underneath saying ‘Silo Arts Trail’. Street art in Runpanyup. Now I’ve seen everything! He continued up the gun barrel-straight road, which was crossed at intervals by red gravel tracks, each sign posted either side with family farm names. Vince recognised them all. It was a featureless terrain, save the straggling rows of eucalypts along the sides of the road, the power lines overhead, and the occasional farmhouse, with its grove of trees and orderly row of rocket-topped steel silos gleaming in the sunshine. The landscape was tabletop flat too, as far as the eye could see, relieved only by the heaped-up dirt edging the dry dams, the attendant impotent windmills, and the distant dark shape of the Grampians to the south. There were none of the undulating hills, majestic tree-lined drives, bluestone fences, and historic homesteads of the Western District properties he had blindly passed on the way up. Vince glanced around. The beauty of this land was not apparent to the casual observer. He knew that. You had to look deeper. And when you found that beauty, it was bleak and brutal but worth the quest. His father loved the Wimmera. ‘This dirt gets into your blood, boys. God’s own country.’ The family had given Mick a light-plane trip over the district for his seventieth. Vince had joined him on the flight. It was just before harvest—in a good year. The geometric patterns of the farms and the colours of the ripening crops were stunning and otherworldly. Mick had peered out the window at the expansive vista below with a radiant smile and tears pouring down his craggy cheeks. As he drove on, Vince was struck by the arid and forlorn appearance of the surrounding countryside. As his father used to say, ‘Come January, son, it’s as dry as a dead dingo’s donger round here.’ But this was different. The huge sky and distant horizon were recognisable enough, but where were the paddocks full of chest-high stalks, loaded with grain, ripe for the stripping? And where were the headers, those majestic broad-combed beasts that should be rumbling up and down, pouring streams of golden grain into the bins, rows of chaff and yellow stubble in their wake? Instead, the fields were still—dormant or speckled with failed crops. Vince slowed down as he approached tiny Minyip, a roadside sign proclaiming it to be ‘The Home of the Wheat Belt’. His father had regarded that sign as pretentious. Now it just looked ironic. He passed the timber Lutheran church, its tall white spire reaching for the heavens, and stopped at the crossroad in the centre of the town. Twenty years ago, the town had achieved fame for being the setting for the fictional ‘Coopers Crossing’ in a TV series about the Flying Doctors. But the showbiz buzz of those halcyon days was long gone. Now there was an eerie silence. Little sign of life. No one in the few shops, the farm machinery dealership deserted, and just a few utes outside the pub. Vince grimaced and followed the Warracknabeal road out into open country. Ten minutes later, he turned into the familiar entrance, the farm gate open and ‘Clonmel’ emblazoned on the fence in dark green letters. He drove across the cattle grid into the poplar-lined drive, bounced along the corrugations, trailing a cloud of dust behind him, and pulled up outside the family homestead. One of Joey’s dogs bounded up as Vince emerged from the car. ‘Settle down, Danger,’ he said, patting the excited kelpie. He walked around to the back of the house and was greeted by the diminutive figure of his sister as she opened the ancient flywire door. Trisha’s auburn mane was greying and her customary bouncy verve was absent. Even her freckles seemed muted. As children, she was as small as he was big, and they were both carrot-topped, whereas Joey had the dark fineness of their mother. ‘Two of you got the Hanrahan hair,’ their father remarked. ‘Poor buggers.’ Vince ran his hand over his chrome dome. Things had changed. Many things. He and Trisha hugged, sibling style, and he followed her onto the rear porch. Out of habit, he took off his shoes and put them on the wooden rack. ‘No sign of him?’ She shook her head. ‘Uncle Jack and I have driven all around, asked the neighbours, been into town.’ She shrugged, hands forward like a priest at the altar. ‘No note or anything?’ She shook her head harder still. ‘Nothing.’ ‘Jane has no idea?’ ‘No,’ Trisha said with a grimace. ‘Has she gone back to Horsham?’ Vince glanced into the house. Horsham was the big smoke, the capital of the Wimmera. ‘Yep, the children were with a sitter.’ She waved a hand around. ‘Janey told me she couldn’t stand even being in this house.’ ‘I didn’t know she’d moved out altogether,’ Vince replied. ‘I thought it was just a trial separation.’ ‘Like you and Lydia, you mean?’ That’s a low blow. He looked around the kitchen, a few new appliances but otherwise the kitchen of his childhood, although his mother would’ve said the place needed a clean. Vince glanced through to the lounge room—newspapers stacked upon the floor, dirty dishes on the table, and a pile of unopened mail on the mantlepiece. The adjacent family photos and old clock were covered with a film of dust. ‘Have you rung the police?’ She sat down, face tight, and balled her hands on the table. ‘What do you think? They were here this morning and took statements off Jane and me. They’ve notified Missing Persons, we’ve contacted Dad’s nursing home, been to the pubs, the golf club, I’ve rung all Joey’s farming friends—not that he’s got many. Old school mates and guys from Ag college—ditto. I spoke to his fishing buddies, and we’ve—’ Vince put his hand up. ‘Okay, okay, I get it. I’ve just arrived and started asking stupid questions. Sorry, sis.’ He and Joey always came to Trisha when they were in trouble and needed her to advocate for them with their parents. Being back home made Vince feel like that little boy again. Except now there was a grown-up problem to solve. And he was a grown-up. Trisha blew her nose into a tissue from a box on the table, got up and lifted the kettle, her eyebrows raised. ‘Yeah, that’d be good, thanks.’ He looked out the window at the still-blazing sun sinking in the big Wimmera sky. ‘I tell you what would be even better—a nice cold beer.’ * * * Vince drank his tea in silence, the kitchen clock ticking and Danger producing the odd, tired bark from the back door. Where would Joey have gone? On the motorbike? He gazed around the kitchen and his mind drifted. The three of them used to be wild farm kids back in the day. Chasing the chooks around, annoying the dogs, riding their bikes up and down the drive, hanging around the old house … s**t, the old house! Down the bottom of the home paddock on the far side of the plantation was the homestead built by Vince’s grandfather when he was given a soldier settler’s block after the war. His son had built a new place higher up the rise after he married Vince’s mother in the sixties, and the original home had become derelict. ‘Has anyone been over to the old house?’ Vince tried to keep his voice steady. ‘Of course, Vinny,’ Trisha answered, chin in her hands, face drawn. ‘We went over and looked everywhere. Nothing there, apart from lots of birds nesting and a few rats.’ Vince pushed his chair back from the table, his mind racing. ‘What about the Old Mass Shandrydan?’ She frowned. ‘Pop’s old caravan? Why would he go there?’ He stood, trying to suppress a rising sense of panic. ‘That’s where he used to hide. After you went to boarding school.’ He headed for the door. ‘When he was in strife,’ he added over his shoulder. Vince burst through the flywire door and sprinted along the path, past the front gate and across the paddock, Danger yapping at his heels. There was no grass underfoot, just dust and the odd tussock or thistle. He was breathing hard as he passed the empty dam and rounded the front fence of the old house. As he neared, he slowed to a jog and walked the last few metres toward the ancient wooden caravan, its large iron wheels rusted and crooked. It was floodlit by the setting sun. Luminous and ominous. ‘Pop used to go droving in that,’ their father had told them, ‘when he’d just started farming and had no money. His old mare, Clover, used to pull it along the roads.’ Despite the heat, Vince shivered with a cold sweat. He felt like he was in a dream. There was the motorbike, parked behind the van. His gut lurched. A loud roaring started in his head as he climbed the rickety steps, waving away a cloud of flies before opening the door. Joey was sitting at the little built-in table, head backward, jaw a mangled mess, the back of his cranium missing. Shotgun on the floor. Blood and brains everywhere. He was quite dead.