Imaginary Foe by Shannon Leahy Read Free Book Online Page A

insular. Anything that happens outside Middleton is of little interest to its inhabitants. The upcoming chicken and spaghetti night, the school fête, the Middleton Show, the sausage sizzle in the shopping centre car park, the next football or cricket match (depending on the season): that’s what’s important to the residents of Middleton. About two thousand six hundred people live here, which means that everyone knows what’s going on in everyone else’s backyard. Some thrive on this and others suffer. It’s very hard to shift camps once you’ve been deemed either a thriver or a sufferer. There are those who don’t fall into either camp, but they’re considered weird, mainly because they don’t waste their time trying to impress or belittle others.
    But to understand Middleton, you’ve got to understand the industry behind it. Nelson’s Abattoir is situated about three kilometres out of town, off the highway that winds south. Dad used to work there as a meat inspector, and he’s told us countless horrific stories about that hellhole. Cramming too many people and too many animals into a building with too many sharp instruments just isn’t a good idea.
    You can always spot an abattoir worker down the street. They’re cloaked in defeat; they wear it in their stoop and in their step. Their hardened faces, which become this way from their heavy consumption of liquor and cigarettes, are usually lowered, with their eyes nervously tracing the footpath before them. It goes without saying, doing a job that involves cutting up animals would have to have some sort of effect on you.
    Ashley Eaton works at the abattoir and he’s one of the nastiest bastards I’ve ever known. But he doesn’t have enough of a conscience to lower his eyes to the footpath. No, his head is always held arrogantly high. He’s in his early twenties and he drives around in a hotted up metallic blue Torana, which he thinks is the pig’s shit. He always has a different girl in the passenger seat. I guess most of them come to their senses after a date or two and stay the hell away from him. One day, I saw Ashley down the street. He was talking to his girlfriend of the moment, ordering her around and telling her that she was a useless bitch. It was a horrible scene that has since played over and over in my mind. I told myself right there and then, that if I ever came face to face with him in a darkened paddock, I’d smash the shit out of him. But that scenario has never come to be. Rumour has it that Ashley has turned to the bottle in a heavy way. I just hope that some girl isn’t waiting on his every drunken need. I imagine him sitting on a couch that’s seen better days, surrounded by empty beer cans, the TV his constant companion. That’s sad, even for an arsehole like him.
    Middleton also has an American-owned alumina refinery, which opened in the early eighties. The refinery makes the most of a bauxite-rich escarpment formed from an ancient fault line. That’s where Dad works now, in the laboratory. I often imagine him leaning over beakers in a white lab coat, not unlike Beaker from The Muppet Show , examining samples of noxious chemicals. I’ve never actually asked him what his job involves; it’s never the right time. He always comes home after work completely stressed out and in a bad mood. He yells at us for no good reason and then seats himself at the kitchen counter and consumes beer after beer. Slowly, with each beer, a slightly happier man emerges. Sometimes, I feel like hiding Dad’s beer, but I don’t think I’d live to see the light of day if he ever found out. It’s not his fault that he likes a drink after work. I don’t blame him at all. Who wouldn’t have a drink after a hard day’s work? And I’m certain he does work hard. You don’t come home looking like that after sitting on your arse all day.
    The Middleton town site sits to the west of the escarpment. Further west of town lies a large flat plain, occupied by