Now, I'm not a vindictive person. But there are times when revenge is called for. I'm sureverybody but the most Godly would agree. Some bastards deserve to be smashed. Damn this turning the other cheek business. This is the saga of one such incident. My beautiful young wife, Annie, was conducting an affair with the rich, handsome Harold at a nearby motel. They didn't even have the decency to conduct this affair a distance away. It was only a matter of time before somebody spotted them and told me. When I confronted Annie, she admitted the affair and divorced me. She got half of everything we owned, which wasn't much. Our house was heavily mortgaged and our credit cards were running out of credit. She saw Harold as a stepping stone to a life of luxury. I saw it as a betrayal and took steps! On the dark, moonless night of their wedding rehearsal I sneaked into their motel room and exacted my revenge. They had been both sleeping the sleep of the sated and slightly sozzled. I returned to my old rattletrap of a car parked across the road and waited. Eventually a banshee wail straight from the depths of hell ripped through the night. My reward! Annie had found Harold's severed head on the vanity basin, dripping blood and staring at her. Annie, vengeance is mine, you bitch! An aside: they weren't married at this stage so my beautiful, greedy wife inherited nothing. Harold's family saw to that. She was now as poor as me. Maybe poorer. Soon as I found out Annie was being unfaithful I had started rat-holing a few dollars every payday. Being a bit cunning, I figured that I'd be the prime suspect. All the family photos and the tool bag that I'd just used, went into the car which I torched. I disguised myself as best I could then went into hiding. My disguise was adequate because I travelled by train, unrecognised, to Cairns, Qld. My ex-army mate, Gordy, knew I was coming. I'd called him from a public phone and he was waiting for me. He drove us, for an hour, to his 5-acre block on the Tablelands where we drank a lot of beer and exchanged stories. He told me that he'd seen reports of Harold's horrific demise on TV. "That'd be somethin' to see, ay Mick?" "Spectacular, Mate. And you shoulda heard Annie screaming! Of course, the cops were following leads. They didn't show photos of the prime suspect, me, because I'd destroyed 'em. "What about the photo on yer drivin' licence?" "Yeah, well, it seemed I was grinning like a demented clown ---" "Yer best look," Gordy interrupted. "--- so I don't look much like me licence." Gordy ran a general engineering workshop and told me he could use me as an offsider. He had miles of work: boats, trucks, farm equipment, even an old lathe he was fitting with new bearings. I liked working on mechanical things. I was in my element. Life was good. We cooked on the barbie, had a pile of pizzas to microwave whenever. Drank a lot of beer and talked a lotta rubbish. He had a good old pooch that I'd take for a walk. I'd grown a beard and put on a bit of weight. Gordy reckoned that I was generic. "Non-specific, Mate. You look like half the population." But the cherry on top was when Gordy took me to the Aboriginal Employment Bureau and told them that I was his long lost brother, Freddy. "He's part Black on our mother's side. She'd taken off when he was a kid and he'd tracked her down to a Black mob west of Katherine. "That'd be the Yunta mob?" the official asked me. "Yeah, Mate," I said. "So I stayed with 'em until Mum died, then I came back to see me brother." Gordy'd told me he'd done a bit of work, cash-in-hand on the official's boat and they were old mates. The upshot was with the certificate the official gave me we went to Centrelink, got me on the unemployed pension, opened a bank account for me and life just got sweeter. "We'll get you a driver's licence later," Gordy told me. ---- Late afternoon, months later, Gordy was heading off to get a couple of SAE bolts for the old Chevy truck. "Give the curry a stir, Freddy. I'll stop off at Janice's and keep her company for a little while," "Okay. Has she gotta sister?" I asked. "Nah, but her Granny's unattached, got most of her teeth and she's quite spritely." He said as he headed off. I had been relaxing with a beer and the dog on the verandah steps when a small red car drove up the long drive. A customer? I stood up and peered as a blonde woman got out and approached me. Nice looking, maybe too much make-up but I'm not complaining. "Hi," I said, "Gordy isn't here at the moment. He'll be back shortly." "I know," she said. "I passed him. But it's you I've come to see." "Wow, lucky me," I said gallantly. She smiled at me and sniffed. "What can I smell?" "That's tonight's beef curry. Do you want to join us? Gordy always makes too much and the dog won't eat it." "No thanks. I'd bet Gordy spoils you and you're living comfortably with him." "Yeah, we're mates." "Here hold this," she said, removing her blonde wig and throwing it at me as she pulled a gun out of her bag. "Annie?" I queried and yelled. "What the---!" "Don't worry, Mick. I won't shoot you unless you try to hurt me," my ex-wife said calmly. "What are you doing here? I don't want to hurt you. You're the one who hurt me," I said. "Wait a minute, where did you get that gun? It looks old." "It was my dad's old service side-arm." "Annie, that's dangerous. It could blow up in your face. Gimme a look. I know about these things." "Mick, you're an idiot. Do you think I am, too?" Annie asked. "Now please listen to me." "Hang on Annie, how did you find me?" "Easy. Gordy's your best friend. Probably your only friend. You phoned each other once a week. I'd heard you talking about, politics, footy and weather on the Tablelands. It wasn't hard for me to find you." "You've come back to me?" I asked. "Definitely not. I'd rather die. I haven't told the police where you are yet. I wanted to look at your face as I tell you that I'm going to eventually tell them where you are. Maybe not today, maybe in a month's time. But you'll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your free life as they hunt you down. Oh yes, and your friend Gordy, will be charged with harbouring a fugitive. "Sadly, Mick where you're going, you won't be eating beef curry, you'll be eating tripe and cabbage for the rest of your life." "Annie, please don't do this. You're just angry that you didn't get to marry money and mix in high society." "Mick, you were a low achiever, lazy and content to just float along. I had to work to keep up a reasonable standard of living and then you killed Harold, my passport to a better life." "Well, I deny it, of course. But you and Harold were cheating on me and probably laughing at me all the time, Annie. If there's anyone to blame, it's you! You were the trigger, I would have just been the weapon, the poor dummy you used to kill Harold. Which I didn't. You're the villain! A murderer! "No! No! You killed my Harold!" she started screaming. " Not me."She was shaking with rage, the gun was waving all over the place. "Annie, I bet he dumped you and you lost your temper and killed him." I yelled back at the crazy bitch and threw my half-full beer can in her face. I lunged to the left, jinked to the right and charged into her with my shoulder. She went flying down the drive-way and dropped the gun. I was onto it as if my life depended on it. Which it did! She was laying on her back, winded. I stood over her. "You stupid woman, as if I'd let you send me to jail," I said and shot her in the chest. She bled from the mouth. "Mick, help me, call an ambulance, please," She gasped. "Why on earth would I do that. You cheated on me and then you came here and threatened to have me and me mate jailed for the rest of our lives. That's not happening! I'm going to load you into the boot of your car, drive it into the bush and torch it. You'll have your own personal funeral pyre. Sorry, Annie." I took her suitcase out of the boot of the car and then tucked her in. I checked to see if she was dead. Yup. I nearly felt sorry for her then I remembered that she was a vindictive, two-timing bitch who wanted to have me jailed for life. I backed the car out of sight, behind the house, stirred the curry and waited for Gordy to finish consorting and come home. While I waited, I thought about Gordy's consorting with Janice. He's elevated it to an art-form. It takes them about an hour. First a drink, he told me. "That's called foreplay, Freddy and then a drink after. That's probably called postplay. But anyway, it's considered ungentlemanly to jump straight on a lady and shoot through straight after doin' the job." I figured that Gordy'll be home in about thirty minutes. I got a beer and sat on the veranda steps with the dog and waited. I spotted Annie's blood stain in the middle of the gravel drive. Aha I thought, if for some reason the cops came sniffing around --- I found the mattock and spade, dug the stain up and threw it down the gutter drain out the front. What I did find was the bullet about three inches down, it went into the drain as well. I gotta spade full of gravel from further up the drive and spread it over where I'd been digging. Just then Gordy drove in, stopped short and yelled, "if yer gunna be gardening, do it in the garden, not in the middle of me bloody drive." And then, "have you been lookin' after the curry or just diggin' holes?" "Yeah Mate, the curry's good. How'd you leave Janice? A happy little vegemite?" I asked. "Yeah but she still wants to move in here," Gordy said. "I been telling her me dog gets psycho and bites strangers and now I told her me long-lost brother's turned up and moved in. And you're a bit off as well, from living alone in the bush all that time. So if she shows up here, bark at her. That'll set the dog off, too. With the pair of you yelping, that'll get rid of her." "So, Gordy, I'm getting the feeling that Janice isn't gunna be Missus Gordy the third?" "Damn right, Freddy. I've had enough of wives. They keep trying to change the basic me." "You'd think they'd know when they're onto a good thing, ay?" We went silent thinking about female oddness. "Okay Gordie, me'n'the dog'll have a practice bark in the morning," I told him. "But first, come and have a look at what I did." I took him around the back and said. "What d'yer reckon." "A little red car. Where did you get it? Did you steal it?" "Of course not," I told him, horrified. "What sort of animal do you think I am?" "Sorry, Freddy." "That's okay," I said. "But open the boot and have a look." He did. "Bloody hell!" He reeled back. "What have you done?" "That's Annie," I said. "She tracked me down and was gunna shoot me or call the cops or maybe both. And the mean bitch threatened to charge you for harbouring me." "Gawd, we can't have that. Well done, Freddy! You know," he reflected, "when that sheila married you, I thought that she had to be a bit of a fruitloop." "What? Why?" I asked. "Well look at her. She's real pretty and you're -um- well ordinary." "Yeah. Hey wait a minute---" "Not now Brains-trust, we gotta get rid of the corpus delectus." "How about we drive into the bush and torch the whole lot?" I asked. "Okay," Gordy said. "We'll take the number plates off the car before we burn it then I'll deep-six them and the gun when we go fishing on Sunday." "Right. Now that's sorted, let's get into the curry to get our strength up. I'll get the wine cask." I thought for a moment. "You know Gordy, she was angry and hell-bent on vengeance. If she was a good person she would have forgiven me."