Carpentaria (57 page)

So, the great bat drive. Shotguns were fired into the air, firecrackers crackled, more chainsaws kept the noise up, and the occasional explosive let off by Carmen, the fish and chip lady, who sometimes doubled as the pyrotechnic, shook the ground. All of this was reminiscent of previous encounters between the town and the bats. The drive would last a whole day, until either Uptown ran out of Panadol tablets for their headaches, or the bats became tired of flying in circles around the town, trying to land, only to be exploded back into the skies in showers of their own stinking urine, their tiny brown eyes looked longingly back towards the river. Finally, flying away from the destruction of fallen trees, they headed up the river corridor, following the freshly open, pale yellow river-gum blossoms that filled the air with a sweet honey-scented perfume. There, they would eat and expel a foul-smelling, pungent gum-blossom-aroma-like shit, as they moved all the way back up to the freshwater springs and rock caves, several hundred kilometres inland.

It was incongruous that with a clear view of the enormous clouds swinging across the coast, which ought to have been enough warning for anyone on earth that a cyclone was heading their way, with winds that would strip the trees clean of foliage, so that they might end up looking like bones with branches sticking out of the earth forever, the town chose instead to turn a blind eye, and continued with the ceremony of belonging it had created for itself. The sounds of Uptown and the thoughts of watery births clashed into each other in Will’s mind, as he started his descent from the hills. The white-flowing curtains of misty rain continued to blow across his path. Frequently, in the flight overhead by flying foxes, seagulls, sea birds large and small flying inland, he saw a cyclone bird, the spiritual messenger of the ancestral creation serpent. This big black bird was the ultimate signal that a big rain was coming.

The noise of the town faded away in the clouds, and the sound of the wind blowing the mist became more prominent, as Will Phantom ploughed on down to the muddy road which he would follow until he reached the town. He still had many kilometres to travel, and walking the straight road to Desperance, he again became absorbed by thoughts of finding the beautiful face and body of Hope swimming under the water, always moving ahead, her long brown hair flowing back. At times, he felt so close to her, he thought if he could reach out, he would be able to touch her hair. So close was this vision he held of her, and always just a moment out of his reach, he was convinced she was urging him on to the place where they would finally be reunited. He spoke to her, reassuring her he would go any place of her choosing. He saw their reunion in the blue of a sea desert, and he was convinced she and he would be alive in this place.

The optimism of this reality felt so near to achievement, he almost fell after it when it disintegrated and disappeared in the wavering of mist closing like light curtains in the flickering of the breeze. He rethought their reunion, trying to capture some unapparent feature in the flat ocean of the vision he had just seen, to pinpoint a location, a direction to travel. Nothing resurfaced of this broken dream. The images could not be properly remembered or held up for scrutiny like a photo of a place, or a map.

Hours passed while he continued on, fiddling with his daydreams, until new sounds interrupted his thoughts. The distraction was the rumbling of tyres churning through mud coming towards him along the fog-blanketed road. Realising the cars were coming from the direction of the town, Will stood back, and listened. He heard several drivers doing what they ought to know you cannot do: drive fast over the claypan roads when they are wet.

He knew instantly the town was evacuating. The Bureau of Meteorology had called and translated the message from the ancestral spirits. Drivers were panicking because they could not get out fast enough. The wheels of cars were spinning out of control as they spun sideways in the mud, sending them off into the green slime sludge on the side of the road where their engines roared even louder, as their wheels churned up mud, spat it out behind, and became hopelessly bogged. He could hear people yelling –
Shit on it, AND fucking get that fucking, rust bucket, useless jalopy out of the fucking way or I will fucking run over ya.
It was like that and so forth.

Turpentine bush and spinifex grass growing on the side of the road and spreading across the mudflats with nothing taller in sight, were as good as a tumble weed for camouflage, so, some distance from the road, Will stood like a shadow in the mist. It was too late to move, but he was almost out of view of anyone seeing him, as the sounds of the chaotic exodus from Desperance closed in. Suddenly, the red light on the roof of the police car spun rays that hung lines of red smoke through the mist, then the motorcade burst through the clouds.

An ashen-faced Bruiser drove the police car he had commandeered from the empty police station. Beside him sat the schoolteacher, Danny Real, looking like he was about to die. Will was close enough to notice that Bruiser was carrying a shiny blue-glass rosary, threaded through the hand clutching the steering wheel. The siren screeched, but his glassy blue eyes were firmly fixed on the road ahead. In the deafening racket of the siren, Will could now plainly hear the car horns beeping and honking right back towards Desperance. Blue car after red car, all-colour cars, shapes and condition filed down the south road, all filled with the frightened-face folk of Uptown absorbed by worries of flight. They had left without a single glance back. Their fearful lips recited prayers loudly in closed cars. Nobody looked at the rain-bathed countryside. All eyes were on the road. Cars impatiently honked their horns. Drivers panicked for their car to be ahead of the one in front. Everyone shouted for others to move faster.

Will watched the people, the kindest to the meanest, with heads in and out of their car windows, screaming wildly at the ones in front to get a move on.
We will all end up dead because of you.
The drivers in front yelled back saying how they could not go any faster, and along with a string of abuse claimed:
You will kill us all if you don’t shut up
. He saw the people of Desperance who had never in their lives gone down this road before, sitting quietly in their cars, apparently accepting the fate of the mystery road. Other faces, planted with shock by the thought of having their personal dreams and hopes doomed, stared into space. He saw most people had no time to gather anything to take with them except their most valued possessions. The family dog in a Catholic family’s car. An old ginger cat. Many carried the prized Desperance roosters and hens. Last, towards the end of the motorcade, came a string of Aboriginal families in Uncles’ cars, a red and black Zephyr, a cream and tan Ford Falcon, and sun-bleached Ford Cortinas of dull blue, squatting low and spurting exhaust fumes into the mud. Cattle trucks followed behind. In the back sat all the old people, some younger men, but mostly women with children – all of the Pricklebush mob now – chanting and singing.

Inside the back of the very last truck, Old Joseph Midnight slowly rocked from side to side. The truck was churning along at a snail’s pace. Aboriginal driver, Will tried to remember who he was: Chilla! Chilla something or other, Mooch. Moochie. Middle-aged fellow always wearing one of those blue peaked caps. Moochie had been working real hard. You could tell from the mud-stained singlet he was wearing over his fat belly. The main ordeal was over as far as Moochie was concerned. Face like a codfish and casually smoking his cigarette. He looked like he was the only person prepared to accept the conditions of the road.

Moochie was talking about how many times over the years they had been told by the white people – ‘Oh! Yaah! Another cyclone coming. We are all going to end up dead one day, you wait and see.’ ‘You get sick and tired of them telling you that,’ he yelled as if he was talking to the whole motorcade, although he was only talking to someone called Fish.

‘People Uptown telling you, looking at
wese
living – “Ah! Ha! One of these days you are going to get ripped apart”.’ He yawned, attempting to pacify his already pacified passengers sitting up in the cab of the truck. Fish chose not to speak, and Moochie continued to offer more highlights from his mind.

‘It is going to go around the town like the last time they got us evacuating for nothing and we should have stayed there if you ask me.’

The people in Moochie’s truck had experienced false alarms about cyclones many times over in their lifetime, and even though this one seemed to have all the ingredients to cause havoc and the so-called
Wreck and ruin
, they saw no point in hurrying, or being heartbroken about their homes being destroyed. ‘Better to get there safe than sorry, I suppose,’ Moochie drawled on. He had barely taken any notice of the panic in town. ‘Whatever,’ he said, replying to the instructions from ‘stand-in’ policeman Bruiser, who told him that he could drive the truck if he went around and made sure no one was left behind. ‘Who’s he to go around appointing himself policeman? Where was Truthful anyway? Isn’t it his job to organise an evacuation?’

The old man, sitting against the wooden slats on the side of the truck where he was stuck with dozens of others, was the only person who looked at the land. He caught sight of Will standing in the mist. He had almost mistaken him for the trunk of a dead tree, but he looked again, knowing his eyes were not so good anymore, but he had looked at this country hundreds of times, and he knows for darn sure that there was no dead tree of any description along this stretch of road
. Najba
ngambalanya
nanangkani
karrinjana
– There is a man standing there looking at us, he says, before recognising Will, but nobody takes any notice of what he has said.

‘What are you doing there?’ he asked Will with a flick of his hand.

‘Going home,’ Will replied with sign language.

‘But! Big cyclone coming, boy, everybody
barrba
,
jayi
,
yurrngijbangka
– you better come with us,’ old Joseph again indicated with his hands.

‘Can’t. I am going to find Bala and Hope,’ Will replied.

‘Better hurry – it won’t be long.’

‘How long?’ Will was starting to judge the distance he still had to get to the town and find shelter.

‘
Ngamiri
. Nobody told me. Everyone
kayi
. Big fella coming this time – I heard them,
barraku
talking. Cover the town. Everything will go. Listen to the ocean. Soon.
Warawara
yanja
ngawu
ninya
lajib
.’

‘Alright, old malbu – until next time,’ Will replied.

‘Your
damu
Daddy too. Where
ninji
Murriba
– who knows? Until next time,
baki
,
yarrbanji
.’

Will was struck by the humility of the old man, and kept looking at him as the truck yawned its way ahead, then disappeared like the end of a fairy story, into the clouds. Will followed the road into Desperance. He became conscious of what the sea ahead was doing once more, and although he knew it was kilometres away, he heard the spirit waves being rolled in by the ancestral sea water creatures of the currents, and conspiring with the spirits of the sky and winds to crash into the land as though it was exploding. The earth murmured, the underground serpent, living in the underground river that was kilometres wide, responded with hostile growls. This was the old war of the ancestors making cyclones grow to use against one another.

So much greater had the winds increased in intensity and speed, Will was struggling to stand upright by the time he made it into Desperance. He lurched from one power pole or concrete marker to another, flying across to grab onto whatever he could, to hold from being swept away. The ground was covered with moving water picked up by the wind and sent flying along with the rain against his legs. Somehow, he avoided the flying missiles of corrugated-iron sheets peeling off the rooftops; pieces of timber, bits large and small of blue or clear-coloured plastic, broken tree branches, and everything else that seemed to have been carried midair: plastic dolls, children’s toys, boxes and crates from the Pricklebush camps, and the contents of green garbage bags straight from the rubbish tip through the town. Will passed hundreds of the town’s poultry set free in the last precious moments by wise owners who had rushed to the chookyard and set the birds loose to fend for themselves. He dodged, weaved and ducked to avoid what had now become wet deranged bleeding balls of flesh as they were blown and bounced, nilly-pilly along the main road south and out of town.

By the time he reached the door of the pub, the tidal water racing into town from the coastline was up to his knees. He held onto the verandah posts bending sideways, while the wind howled past loaded with rain, and he could see he had no time to lose before the verandah above him would collapse under the strain. Knowing he had to get inside the closed building, he hoped as he threw himself towards the door he would not find it locked. Miraculously, it opened, and he could not believe his luck, that at last, something could be achieved without a great deal of effort.

It was even darker inside than outside where the time of day had become indeterminable from one hour to the next. Water floated around the darkened bar room, and when he saw the red glow of a cigarette, he was amazed to find someone else was using the pub as a refuge.

‘Lloydie Smith!’

‘Holy smoke! You gave me a shock. A man thought you were a ghost,’ Lloydie snapped.

Will collapsed in a chair and said nothing.

‘And what the hell’s name are you doing here, anyway. There is nobody around so I don’t know what you are looking for if you are looking for anyone. If you come to rob the place – go ahead. I won’t be stopping you.’ Lloydie looked at Will who continued staring at him. ‘You look like you’ve been through a cyclone.’ He laughed at this irony and threw towels over to Will to dry himself and clean the blood running from his cuts, particularly on his legs. ‘Don’t you know the whole town has been evacuated?’