Dirt Music (31 page)

Fox throws out a few morsels and the sharks roll in a welter of spray to get at them. He drops hanks of skin and guts closer to shore and the lemon sharks bullock their way in so fast they wet him. The sight of it makes his heart thump. He drops his meal almost onshore and the sharks rush it in a wild scrum of fins and tails. Two sharks find themselves beached in all the mayhem and Fox gets down on his haunches and laughs as they writhe back into the water. He feeds them, applauds and taunts them until dark when he heads up to his camp facing a hungry night.

Next day the sharks return with the tide and the sight of them cheers him. They come back every day after that and he looks forward to their arrival. Despite his croc anxiety he cuts tidbits for them and teases them in closer until they’re snatching meat from his hands. They stand on their pectoral fins, heads clear of the water, and he strokes their bony, flat pates as they lunge forward. From camp he brings down his coil of rope and ties plate-sized fish heads to it to play tug-of-war. The bigger sharks haul him off his feet or drag him heels-first to the water’s edge before snaffling the prize or gnawing through the rope. Emboldened, they chase treats right up onto dry land and roll and writhe their way back down to water, and the games escalate until Fox is manhandling them and they’re bumping and passing him in the shallows. He loves the sport of it, the mad, reckless play, but it’s the bodily presence of them that he treasures most, the weight of them in his arms, against his legs, the holiness of their power, the carnal sociability of the buggers. Every day they come like a bouncing, bickering pack of dogs, and after they’re sated with food they tug on an empty vine until Fox laughs so hard he gets hiccups.

––––

The cyclone catches him by surprise. Preoccupied with shark play, he barely registers the two dark days of solid overcast which precede it. The afternoon of the third day is black but it feels no different from the usual diurnal build-up until he notices fish jumping madly amongst the flooded mangroves and when he looks down the gulf he sees the irritable state of the water beyond the island’s lee. The air smells suddenly electric and his ears pop. A chill wind comes ripping through the treetops.

Fox carries the kayak higher up into the vegetation beyond the boabs. By the time he’s up on the ledge, securing what he can at camp, the air is deliciously cool. Huge black toadstool clouds bank up across the water and thunder rolls in. He moves his gear back in under the overhang and lashes his bough shelter down with the sorry remains of his rope.

Lightning bleaches the trees and a waterspout rises like an angry white root from the dirt-coloured sea; it comes hissing and spitting across the water sucking small dark objects into the air. It bears down on him but then veers suddenly toward the mainland and is lost from view.

Before dark the wind comes from the sea and the island’s bluffs protect him from the worst of it, but as the light fades he feels it begin to angle in more from the west and waves begin to pound the beach. He doesn’t like the feel of the storm. Anxious about the precious kayak being washed or even blown away, he scrambles down to haul it all the way through the trees and up the rock terraces to camp. He shoves it back into the confines of the overhang as water begins to fall in sheets from the bluffs above.

In the early evening the bough shelter begins to break up. The wind screams in the vines and the fig tree seems to strain at its very roots. The rock face becomes a waterfall and during the night the rock above his head begins to seep. By morning there is a stream running through his little cave. It issues from the base of the bluff behind him and forces him up onto narrow niches where he crouches with his gear, unable to keep a candle alight.

The storm continues to intensify. The shriek of the trees terrifies him. The kayak butts against the rocks beneath his feet. Fox wraps himself in his sodden swag and tries not to think of his mother. He begins to hum to block out the sound. He blocks his ears with his fingers.

Tuarts. Tuart trees on the sandy coastal plain. In the days before the old man sawed them down and ground out the stumps vengefully, the house was encircled by tuarts. His mother loved them. Graceful, and grey-barked, their shade cnoled the yard and brought birds and from the largest hung a tyre swing that Darkie and he rode until their feet ploughed a four-way furrow in the dirt and the tree bore a shiny patch from collisions.

The broad crowns of the tuarts roared with the unceasing wind of the midwest coast. On summer mornings it sounded like a mob up there high off the ground and in storms the tuarts made the wind sound like an advancing army.

It was just a trip to the chookyard. A northerly gale was blowing, the kind of warm mealy blast that preceded the passage of a big winter front. His mother’s hair streamed back across her shoulders. Her laugh was musical. They squatted to gather eggs.

He held the wire basket. They headed back for the house; he remembers the feel of his hand in hers and the bummy smell of eggs.

They were under the swing bough, leaning on the wind, when a gust wrenched the tree with a noise like a slap round the earhole. She swept from his grasp. Half a second later a storm of foliage yanked him off his feet. He lay there a moment staring up through the leaves at a fishscale afternoon sky. A birdnest hung above him speckled with foil and feathers. The very earth beneath him seemed to vibrate with the struggle of trees against the wind but the blanket of gumleaves felt like protection. He felt dreamy, safe. When he did get up to find his mother, there was no blood on her that he could see, just spilled yolks and the sinister, glistening albumen smeared up her bare legs. The sheared point of the bough was in her chest but he didn’t yet understand that she was dead. He would be ten in a few days.

Tonight every flurry beneath the rock feels like the breeze of her passing. It buffets him all night; he knows it too well. All his life it seems he’s been walking in the slipstream of the dead and he hates it.

Always that slap of wind. Left behind.

And here he is again bringing a snakeskin in from the creek to show them. She holds up the papery tube and smiles.

Look, Wally she says. Look how good the world is, look at the things it leaves us. It means us no harm.

The boy senses he’s stumbled into a debate in progress.

Doesn’t count, mutters the old man hardly looking up. It’s an illusion, a dream we have to pass through.

But look!

Things. Stuff. Just things.

And the smile on her face as she sits back in her chair with the book open on her lap and the hair shining with each happy shake of her head. Holy she says with a hint of teasing. Holy holy holy.

Shit and gristle, that’s all. It doesn’t matter.

Holy. Tell him, Lu.

Standing there open-mouthed between them, wondering if bringing it home has been a mistake.

Holy? He always wanted to believe it, and it felt instinctively true from a thousand days spent dragging a stick through the dirt while crows cleared their throats benignly at him and those stones whined gentle upon the hill. But there she is in the end with a tree through her. And the old man all that time dying with those blue fibres in his lungs. God’s good earth. Tilting away from him time and again, stealing from him. Sliding beneath the tyres of that old ute and then suddenly catching, biting enough for it to roll and send the kids out into the paddock like flung mailbags. The world is holy? Maybe so. But it has teeth too. How often has he felt that bite in a slamming gust of wind.

At dawn he crawls through the run-off and stands on the scoured ledge to see that the worst is over. There is the smell of brimstone in the air. From there he can see slagheaps of shell and the log ramparts thrown up by the sea. On his way down he sees his freshwater pool overflowing. The track is a rivulet through the chaos of strewn rainforest. He picks his way until he comes to the great asterisk in the beach where the giant boab used to be. Within the lightning crater coals still glow. A few amputated limbs lie smouldering beyond it but most of it’s ash now, ash and fire-glazed shell. A few nearby trees are scorched but the fire hasn’t spread back into the belt of green below the bluffs.

There are jellyfish in the trees. They glisten in the sudden sunlight.

Fox chips oysters and throws them into the hot coals of the tree until they bubble and hiss and open their mouths.

In the wake of the cyclone the season wanes and the days become clear and hot, the atmosphere drier. Fox senses the beginning of a contraction, a scarcity of berries, a browning off of grasses.

He works harder for his daily catch and he sees that the basin at the foot of the bluff, although wide and generous in its supply of drinking water, may not get him through the Dry season.

On hot, breathless days he paddles around the spit toward the mainland and heads up mangrove creeks to search for water and maybe a camp spot. He finds the remnants of the creeks’ freshwater sources in shrinking billabongs, but the hikes are brutal and the sources unlikely to last. He heads north into the archipelago and finds lovely places but none more practical than where he already lives. In a week of day trips he moves through the islands without success until he’s forced to consider the mainland coast enfolded by them.

Coasting back toward his island on the early change of tide he comes upon a white hummock at the side of a tiny mangrove creek.

Beside the hummock are slim boabs and a sandy cove. He paddles in for a quick look, puzzling over the shelly mound. It’s the size of two Landcruisers parked together and it’s not until he’s stood on it a while that he realizes that it’s a midden. Within the pearly surface are veins of grey and black, bits of charcoal, mussel shells, cockles, oysters.

Behind the midden is a wide flat area dotted with pandanus palms.

Curious, he goes down and finds a steady trickle of fresh water winding its way seaward across the field of crushed shell. Beyond is a thorny vine thicket and the sound of frogs. Fox works his way around until he comes to a sandstone breakaway. There’s a promising overhang here. Yes, a good camp, an alternative should the water ever dry up completely on the island.

Fox climbs up the little escarpment to get a view and on the next ridge he finds a wide-mouthed cave shrouded with rock figs. On the ledges outside the overhang are tiny dancing figures the colour of dried blood upon the yellow rock. He gives a little grunt of surprise. He examines the dynamic images, most smaller than his hands, and marvels at their tufted head-dresses and skirts. Many are weathered into obscurity.

Inside the cave he sees other paintings in a different style. He stoops to look, but hesitates. On the rear wall a large mouthless face stares at him. Rays stream from its head. Fox feels green ants dropping onto his shoulders from the fig. He thinks what the hell, and goes in crouched.

The ceiling is taken up by a huge ochre figure in red and white.

Its head is the size of a turtle shell, the eyes big and dark, and it too is mouthless. Arms like plucked wings.

Between the splayed legs a strange trunk reaches down.

Fox lies on his back to see it better. Such a fierce, staring face. Like a stormcloud.

Hello, he whispers. Just visiting.

The weathered face is twice the size of his own.

Dirt creaks beneath him. The cave smells of charcoal. He thinks of that kid Axle and wonders if he’s seen this. Insects have daubed mud nests across this fella’s knees. Parts of him are fading altogether but the face is bright enough, the eyes still fiery.

Halfway out into the light Fox catches himself making the sign of the cross and he stifles a laugh. Hasn’t done that for a while.

Fox holds the midden camp in reserve. Meanwhile he looks for food, measures it, ekes it out, thinks about it. His dried fruit is gone now and with it his rice and precious chilli powder. He gathers pinches of salt from rock dimples at low tide. He finds himself scrounging longer and longer every day. He can ill afford to spare fish carcases for the sharks.

In the end the thought of all that stuff cached down the other end of the gulf is too much for him. On a day of modest neap tides he strikes out in the kayak at first light.

Even with a light breeze at his back it’s a four-hour paddle. He goes ashore at the headland and lies among the rocks a while to make certain the fishing camp is still deserted. But there’s no sign of anyone. The cyclone has knocked the bough verandah down and torn its spinifex thatch.

Inside the cave a few crates have tipped as though water’s been through and stuff has spilt on the shellgrit. There’s quoll shit everywhere; the hardy little marsupial buggers have been at everything. The generator and freezers seem to have endured inside their plastic wraps, and beyond them, in foam and PVC boxes, Fox finds candles, cigarette lighters, antiseptic cream, a carton of beer from which he takes a six pack, curry spices and black pepper, weevilly flour, bags of rice, tubes of sunscreen and repellent. With persistence he finds freeze-dried vegetables and even raisins. He piles it all into a plastic drum and lashes it to the kayak.

He searches in vain for a book or magazine. He consoles himself with an iron skillet and a tiny jar of paw-paw ointment. He has no luck replacing the insect net he’s ruined catching prawns, but he makes off with a thrownet he wishes he’d seen last time. He stuffs it into the kayak and hopes the disarray from the storm might cover his pilfering. He seals every container and before he goes he rakes the floor of the cave with a dead branch. He goes back on the tide in high spirits and makes the island well before sunset. The sharks are waiting but he has no time to play. He plunges the six pack into his dwindling freshwater pool to let it cool while he stashes his haul. He cooks rice in his skillet with peas and dried apricots and while the new moon gets up he opens a can of beer. He’s surprised at the unearthly sound it makes when he rips the top and how sour it is and how quickly it makes his head spin. It goes down in three swallows and he fetches up another. He lights a candle just for the novelty of it but blows it out again, wishing there’d been a book; anything to contain his mind, direct his thoughts, feed him.