Chapter 19
Frank
Title: A ton of money and it ain't worth shit
Date: Couple weeks ago. Maybe more. Hard to tell when you're dyin
I've been starin at this money for three weeks now, and I still don't know what the hell I can do with it.
Stacks of it. Bundled neat like it came from a bank. Maybe it did, but not through the front door. Bob's dirty money. Years and years of it. Backhanders and bribes and fuck knows what else that bastard's done with that badge of his.
There's more cash here than I ever made in fifty years of workin cattle.
More than Koolaroo turned over in its best decade.
I’ve got it stacked on Willy's kitchen table in neat little towers.
And you know what the joke is? I’ve got no fuckin idea what to do with it.
But I've been here for weeks, writin these memoirs, just about shittin myself every time I run for the dunny, but I can't think of a single bloody thing I wanna do with all this cash. I never done no wish list. What’s the point when I’ve never had spare cash to wish with?
Never had a holiday in my life. Didn't see the point. Where the hell was I gonna go that was better than Koolaroo? Some resort with cocktails and a pool full of other people's piss? Some city hotel that smells like carpet cleaner and another bloke’s aftershave?
Fuck that.
Cars? I've got a perfectly good truck. Does the job. What am I gonna do with a sports car in the Outback? Damn thing would bottom out on the first cattle grid I drove over.
A boat? I live in the middle of the driest country on earth.
Guess if I wasn’t dyin I could get me one of them outdoor kitchens I’ve seen on the telly. Then again, ain’t no way I can return to Koolaroo, not now that I pinched this cash.
I thought about spendin the cash on a woman. Maybe a pair of ’em at the same time. But how can I when my body is yellin at me to hurry up and die already. Especially as I’m so fuckin sick of eatin canned beans. Never thought I’d say that. Never thought I’d live this long neither.
When I googled my symptoms and figured out what I got, I reckoned I had six months to live.
By the time I got my shit together and made a plan to vanish from my life, five months had passed.
I stocked this place with a month's worth of food. I’m fucked if I run out, ’cause I can’t go outside.
Last thing I need is to run into one of Bob’s fuckin men.
So I sit here with Bob's dirty money and the walls whisperin like Willy always said they did, and I think, what the fuck was it all for?
The cattle. The land. Dealing with dodgy bastards always tryin to rip me off. Sixty years of breakin my body for Koolaroo, and it turns out the richest I've ever been is right now. Sittin in my dead brother's kitchen with stolen cash and a bladder that feels like it's full of broken glass.
I'll tell you somethin I've never told a soul.
There were mornings on Koolaroo—early ones, before the flies got nasty and the heat turned mean—where I'd ride out to the western ridge and just sit there. Horse breathin under me. Sky doin that thing it does before the sun clears the horizon. Like the whole world was holdin its breath.
And it was enough.
Didn't need no money. Didn't need a damn thing. Just clean air and land as far as I could see.
Maybe that's all I ever needed. Too late now.
The grim reaper’s been sittin outside this house since I got here, just waitin on me. I can feel it. Body's failin in ways I ain’t never felt before. Everythin fuckin hurts. Everything's wrong. Every time I stand, I see stars.
Gotta say though, it’s kinda thrillin wonderin if Bob knows I took his cash. He'll be shakin apart with rage. That thought keeps me alive when nothin else does. Picturin Bob Ackerman standin in that outstation starin at the empty parts of the walls.
That's worth more than every note on this table.
So maybe that’s what I’m tryin to say.
Money don't change who you are. It just gives you more rope.
Some men rope cattle with it. But most men hang themselves.
I built Koolaroo from nothin. Hard work. Long days. No shortcuts. Well. Some shortcuts. But the land itself? That was honest. That was real.
This money on the table is Bob's noose.
Wish I could be there when it tightens around his fuckin neck.
Anyway. That's it.
Frank Branson.