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No Bull Becky and the Crocodile Bait

A ghost story

By Fiona HamerPublished 2 years ago 10 min read
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No Bull Becky and the Crocodile Bait
Photo by insta @H95i on Unsplash

"That a storm coming?" One of the regulars peers out the grubby window at the long line of dusty road. "I heard there was a storm coming."

"It's something." says his companion, looking up from the two flies quarrelling in the dregs of his beer glass.

The red dust boils up from the road into a towering cloud that streams back into the endless desert distance.

"Not the truck." The two regulars sigh.

The longed-for supply truck makes a far bigger plume. The largest of all are the road trains, but they don't come this way, a detour from the main highway that leads to the Rainbow Waves National Park, which is closed, and the pub, which as always, is open.

This plume is smaller. A private car from the highway. Maybe on its way to the mining camp.

"There is a storm coming, though." the first regular persists stubbornly. "They ought to bring those signs in before they blow away."

The blue sky is obliterated by dust as the Toyota Hilux swings into the parking area.

The stranger steps into the doorway, brushing aside the tattered multi-colored strips of plastic flyscreen to enter the bar. He squints around the dim room, his eyes small in a lined, leathery face. “Did you hear there’s a storm coming? You might want to pull those signs in.”

"See, what did I say?" says the regular.

The young barman, Fernando, looks up from doomscrolling on his phone, eyes lighting up. “All right! It’s on.”

"Not that storm, young fella. We're talking weather, not politics," scoffs the regular.

Fernando's long face falls a little, but a new customer is entertainment enough for Nardoo Reef so he recovers a little

This stranger is likely a miner, from the looks of his fluoro safety vest, grubby jeans, and swept-back, greying hair.

“What can I get you?” Fernando is waiting eagerly at the taps. His narrow face is intent with concentration. “We have beer, Becky’s famous home-made lemonade, and I can do cocktails, mojitos, margaritas, it’s all up on the board there….” He juggles the never-used cocktail shaker hopefully.

“Nah, a beer’ll do. Where are you from, kid?”

“Argentina. I came on a working holiday for a few months and got stuck with the border closures.”

“Bad luck, mate. Can’t be easy being trapped in a place like this.”

The stranger looks around at the wooden wall behind the bar, adorned with a giant metal sign showing a Brahmin bull, with a rough “X” painted across it. The scattered chairs and tables are worn and faded, with a scattering of red dust.

“It’s not so bad.” Fernando waves his arm at the wide screened-in verandah, which opens onto a shady garden with a row of lemon trees and the dangling strands of sarsaparilla leaves. Beyond the green are glimpses of the endless red desert and scattered scrubby trees.

“It’s certainly changed since I was last here. What’s with the sign?”

“It’s No Bull Becky’s sign. Someone tried to test it out by bringing in a bull on a rope, but she sent them off running down the street with their bull behind them, bellowing.

“Huh. No Bull Becky, that’s what they call your boss? She around? "

“Somewhere. Do you want me to get her?”

“Nah. Nah. Place has been cleaned up pretty much. A lot of trade?”

“Used to be. Not since Covid. Hardly any buses, no tourists, just the miners and the locals.”

As the stranger takes the beer, Fernando can’t stop himself from asking more questions. “So how did you hear about the Storm? I haven’t seen anything for weeks. I was almost, maybe, thinking it was a myth, like Becky says.”

The stranger looks surprised. “Definitely not a myth. It was on the radio.”

Fernando’s hands are shaking. “And they activated the 5G? I knew they were locking us down for something. So we’d be ready for it.”

“Huh?” the stranger looks puzzled.

There’s a clatter from behind the bar and Becky appears carrying a jangling crate of glassware. She squints at the stranger’s silhouette against the bright sun behind him. Fernando touches her arm.

“He says the Storm is coming.”

“I said a storm is coming.”

Becky’s lined face is set in lines of permanent scepticism. “You haven’t been encouraging this crackpot, have you? He spends all his time on the internet, collecting junk information and spouting it off to the customers.”

“No bull. Heard it on the radio just now. Hope you’re ready for a big one.”

Becky looks sharply at Fernando’s eager face and shakes her head. Her short hair is shiny, but the rest of her is tough and tightly muscled from years of hard work. The stranger looks at her more closely.

“Becky? I didn’t recognise you for a moment there. I’d heard you were still around here, so I thought I’d look you up on my way through.”

The crate of glassware goes crashing to the floor. “Terry? Omigod, Terry?”

“Large as life and twice as beautiful.” He smiles winningly at her. “I didn’t realise you’d done so well for yourself.”

“But…but…” she stammers.

He takes her thin, work-hardened hand in his own scarred one. “I would have recognised you anywhere. You look just the same as you ever did.”

“I do not. I’m a hag.” Becky actually blushes. The regulars are fascinated.

“You look just perfect. It’s so great to see you.”

“But…I don’t get it…”

“There’s no-one as good as Becky, that’s what I’ve always said. I should have known you’d make a go of this pub, even if no one else could, till I got back.

Becky takes in a deep breath and considers the smiling, cocky face opposite her, then pulls her hand away.

The regulars wait for the explosion as she draws herself up to her not very great height, somewhere below Fernando’s shoulder.

The stranger keeps talking, oblivious of the warning signs so familiar to the locals. “I used to dream of coming back here, like this, and now seeing you standing right here, as large as life, that’s the icing on the cake, the hole in one, the grand slam, the smash hit.”

“You're dead,” she says fiercely.

“Don’t be like that.” The stranger spreads his hands placatingly.

Fernando looks confused. “There is a problem?”

“This lying mongrel was eaten by a croc on a fishing holiday near Darwin.”

“Just my left toe.”

“Bull.”

“I can take my shoe off and show you.”

“Why?”

“I guess he didn’t like the taste of me.”

“No, why leave your boat full of blood and your gear floating in the mangroves? Everyone thought you'd carked it. I thought you were dead. You had to be dead, because where else would you be but in a crocodile’s stomach?”

“Well, luckily, I’m not. I just thought I’d leave town for a bit.”

“A really long bit.”

“Well, yeah. I’d have come back sooner if I knew you were still here.”

Becky puts her hand to her head, as though clearing her eyes. “The debt collectors. You ran away because of the debts.”

“Yeah, that could have been part of it. I see you did good with the place, though.”

“Not so good as I’d have done with the license holder on the premises, with a father for my kid. You left me with a derelict pub and a baby on the way.”

“You have a kid?”

“Don’t pretend to be gobsmacked, Mr Crocodile Bait. Surely the flapping tongues who led you here told you that as well. Great kid. Looks like you, but not an oxygen thief like you. He’s Fernando’s age, but training to be a mining engineer in Newcastle.”

She straightens up a little more, proudly.

Terry whistles. “I got a smart kid. That’s amazing. Always knew I could have done real well, if I’d had the chance.”

Becky stares him down. “You had plenty of chances. You just took all the wrong ones.”

Outside, while the dust has settled, the sunshine has suddenly darkened with thick storm clouds.

The regulars, look back and forth between the drama in the bar and the natural drama about appearing outside, call out “You need us, Becky? Cause the road’s going to be slippery as a fresh caught fish in a minute.”

She waves at them. “You go. I’ve got this.”

They jog out to their dusty vehicles just as the first splashes of heavy rain start falling.

Fernando runs out after them into the rain, turning and staring up at the sky as his eyes fill with water. “It’s a real storm!”

Becky shakes her head. “That boy. His head is full of myths and signs and portents, but he’s a good worker when he concentrates.”

The stranger moves back into her line of sight. “Aren’t you even a little bit happy to see me? I remember when you would light up like a Christmas tree every time we…”

He tries to take her hand again, but she snatches it away.

“Twenty years ago, I’d have been stupid enough to be glad. But they call me No Bull Becky now. And for a reason. I don’t take crap from people like you anymore.”

“Maybe we could get back together, see how things go.”

“No way.”

“Even just for a week or so?”

“Well, that's a romantic offer I don't think. What are you running from now?”

He hesitates. “Well…There’s this guy who got the idea I was going to help him with a gold mine, but there was a problem with the paperwork…”

“Scratch that, I don’t want to know. Just get out and get going.”

“Not going anywhere in this.” The rain is pouring down now, turning the gravel road to a stream of red mud as long and wide as the dust plume had been high. “Plus, you know, this is really my pub, the license was in my name.”

“You’re putting me on.” She shakes her head. “In case you weren’t aware, Terry Jones has been officially dead for twenty years. An innocent crocodile was shot and made into barbecue and handbags on your behalf.”

“Ah, c’mon Becky. You should be grateful I left you so well set up.”

“Fernando!” she calls “Get the stick!”

Fernando, sopping wet and ecstatic from dancing in the rain, runs behind the bar to unhook a long wooden pole with a pair of sharp bull’s horns fastened to the end.

“This is my implement for removing troublemakers. And you are a trouble maker. As well as a ghost. And definitely dead”

She points at him, and there's something so fierce in her expression that his blood chills.

The stranger tries to catch the horns, but is shoved relentlessly toward the door by Fernando shouting “You do what she say, you paedo. We gotta save the children.”

Becky sighs. “He’s not a paedophile, Fernando, as far as I know, but I think Constable Pearce’d be pretty interested to know he’s here, being that he’s crocodile bait, and dead already.”

Fernando looks confused “Dead. Ah. A zombie, then. Okay. We don’t want them either.”

The stranger’s scarred face has paled at the mention of cops, and he turns away, with Fernando following, giving occasional vicious prods.

“Yeah, get out of here, zombie crocodile man.”

His battered Toyota slips in the newly slick red mud on the road, but straightens up and keeps going out of town into the desert. Soon he’s hidden by the unfamiliar curtain of grey rain.

“Dead. That’s what he is. And that’s what he’ll stay,” says Becky.

Two days later, as the red-brown swirling water begins to drop back to reveal the sandy base of the Rainbow River, a crushed ute is found thrown on its side, washed down and away from the flooded crossing. There is no sign of a driver.

“Nearly as good as a crocodile,” says No Bull Becky.

But that night she cries, for lost dreams, and for memories of her younger, less cynical self.

Humor
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About the Creator

Fiona Hamer

Simultaneously writing fiction and restoring a sheep farm in Australia. Can get messy. You can see more about life on the farm at onebendintheriver.com.

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