You Will Shoot Your Eye Out

“Aussies can be strange folks, especially when it comes to understanding us “Yanks.” For one thing, they seem to think all Yanks know each other, or at least, we know someone who knows the other Yank. For another, they apparently believe all Yanks have some deep need to regularly interact with other Yanks like, “to talk Yank, you know, and discuss Yank things.”

When my clearance to visit a remote Australian military facility failed to arrive at the last minute, my hosts quickly solved the problem of what to do with me, stuck outside the gate for four days while they were inside, training. They couldn’t even leave me their vehicle, and we were miles from nowhere.

“No worries, mate!” they happily cried. “We know a Yank, just like you, who lives rather nearby! He’ll gladly put you up, there’s drink and tucker aplenty, and you’ll have a grand time talking Yank with him and all!”

I had this fleeting vision of a rich expatriate American who maintained a sumptuous outback residence, where he enjoyed his brisk pink gin chilled by ice from a generator-powered freezer. I could almost hear the creak of a hammock in the shade, bearing my big fellow-American butt. Then they popped my bubble.

“Oh, this chap’s a character, all right,” they said as we bounced over sun-scorched rocks. “He’s a sort of modern-day swagman, you see; renounced civilization and lives on half o’ nothin’. To say he’s gone bush wouldn’t be correct; gone feral is more like it. Says he’s ‘mapping the billabongs of Australia, 100 meters per year.’ He’s been at it dog’s years, he has, and still working on the first one.”

Waltzing Matilda, Indeed

They all laughed. I didn’t. The scent of cold pink gin vanished, along with my visions of a spacious Victorian manse. My imaginary hammock collapsed. They musta picked up on my change of mood, and reassured me.

“Ow, it’s not bad, Connor,” Bruce No. 2 said, going serious and furrow-browed. “No crocs in his waters, so you can even bathe, and he’s a bluidy marvel at comin’ up with tucker; roots and fruits, the odd snake for roasting, simply buckets of fish, and he cooks ’em all, you know, none of this sushi business.”

“Ow, right,” added Bruce No. 3, puffing his pipe, “Cooks everything in one billy-can, he does; I’ve seen it.” My vision was revised to something more like a one-man Somali refugee camp. We arrived.

There was a billabong — a small one, but flowing, not stagnant — and about a four-acre backwater where the spiny snouts of what looked like hundreds of alligator gar were cutting the surface, sucking in thousands of some kind of pinwheeling bugs whose papery wings made them look like cherry blossoms falling to the water.

On the sandspit separating billabong from backwater sat Methuselah, stirring something in a smoke-blackened can — his “billy” — over a fire. A half-dozen loaves of “stick-bread” were plumped and browning. It smelled glorious.

“Knew you were coming,” he said. “Hope you’re hungry.” The “Aborigine Grapevine” is faster than wireless. The billy held tender chunks of pre-seared fish fillets in a light seasoned cream sauce. I may be just a dumb grunt, but that superb meal, served in the outback by a dude whose only clean possession was his sparkling spectacles, was the clue to open my head-valve and learn something.

Outback Style

First thing I learned was those fish weren’t alligator gar. “Atractosteus spatula,” Mr. M explained, “Is native only to the Southeastern US. There are Asian gar, of course, but these seem even more primitive. Tasty, aren’t they?”

I learned he was a prodigy graduate of an Ivy League university holding twin Master’s degrees; at one time the VP of a giant metal fabricating corporation, and for several years the ghost-writer of a political analysis column. Along the way he took cooking classes from famous chefs.

His transformation to swagman status was occasioned by an uncontrollable gambling habit and politically-induced nausea: Washington made him ill. His world was global, complex, and ultimately sickening. He underwent “Zen reduction.”

Mr. M reduced his world to a campfire on a nameless outback stream. He reduced data-input to an occasional book; restaurants, cafés and dinner parties to cooking in one battered billy made from a discarded olive oil tin. And around that billy-can, he constructed a politico-legal analytical model: The Billy-Can Rules.

It’s Probably OK

“Everyone has known a Billy,” he began. “Christened William, but he’s always been Billy, and even in middle age, he sticks out his hand and grins, ‘I’m Billy. Pleased ta meetcha.’ He’s not educated, but he’s not stupid, and is often the only one around who can repair a washing machine, fix a microwave, and align a satellite dish properly.

“He’s the guy who hears your battery dying in the driveway and comes over with his truck and jumper cables. Helping you makes him late for work, but he waves it off with ‘S’wat friends are for, ain’t it?’ You don’t think of him as a friend, but he always treats you as one.

“Billy works with his hands by choice. He likes machines, grease, dogs and most people. He’s a veteran without medals, a patriot without pretense; the purest salt of America’s earth. Without people like him, the rich, famous and powerful elite would not possess the freedoms — or consumer base — which allows their successes. In our socioscape Billy is simply overlooked.

“Billy is — or should be — the ultimate arbiter of what makes sense, legally, politically and socially. He may not approve of every new law, policy or public position, and that doesn’t matter much; universal consensus is unrealistic. The question is, can Billy understand it? The rationale behind it? The essential why?

“If he does, that’s good — for the people and the nation. If he doesn’t, it’s bad; bad law, bad policy, bad news for all of us. Everything goes in the billy-can. The only truth is what comes out — what we have to digest. Zen-simple, young soldier.”

Can Billy?

I’ve asked myself a thousand times — Can Billy understand Social Security benefits for illegal aliens? Shipping our skills and materials overseas to those who might shoot them back at us? Billion-dollar “trailers” on million-dollar appropriations bills? “Uncommitted super-delegates” in elections? Disarming peasants and coddling criminals? Fill in your own blanks, folks. I do every day — and everything goes in the billy-can.

This story may seem like a long, winding path leading to a minimalist, enigmatic ending. It is. Put it in your billy-can, stir, and taste.

Connor OUT