Gunshot Road (12 page)

Stonehouse Creek

DANNY AND I SET
out early, left Hazel standing in the doorway. When we crossed the town boundary, I lit up a smoke, threw some Pigrum Brothers onto the stereo and gave the massive turbos their head. The car leapt down the highway like a beast uncaged.

We reached the Gunshot Road in a couple of hours, turned west. Drove past the roadhouse without stopping.

The country grew drier, harder, the vegetation more sparse. We drove past perished cattle, puffed, primed, ready to explode. Dead trees, lonely fenceposts ringbarked by time's fire. Hot again; it was going to be hot for months.

Eventually we came to the rusty bones of an ancient Bedford truck with an arrow and the words
Stonehouse Creek
painted onto its remaining door. We followed the arrow, turned south. Spent the next three hours slogging across a slew of corrugations, bulldust and sump-crunching termite mounds.

Proper bush work for Cockburn's car. It seemed to be coping.

I was feeling anxious as we drove into the camp: somebody else's country, somebody else's dreams. Rocking up in a police car, I had to be careful not to stir up old ghosts. The last police punitive expedition swept through Kantulyu country within living memory. Those men, intent upon revenge for the spearing of a white prospector who couldn't keep his penis in his pants, rampaged through the countryside for weeks on end, killing whoever they came into contact with. Hundreds of Kantulyu died. The survivors fled in terror and ended up on the missions and settlements.

Now a handful of people wandered out to greet us. Suspicious at first—the car, I assumed—then enthusiastic, as Danny emerged. He drifted off to join the other boys, and I found myself standing awkwardly in the middle of the community.

The most prominent object in sight was an old club lounge, the stuffing knocked out of it but the fabric a faded, evanescent blue against the white sand.

For the rest, Stonehouse Creek was the usual remote community cluster of hairy hovels and rundown shacks, with a hand pump for water and a shovel for a shithouse. But beautiful, in its own way, nestled at the foot of a sail-shaped crimson pillar and fringed by ghost gums and a dry creek.

The camp's gross domestic product consisted mainly of dogs, and an unusually gross collection they were. Flea-bitten, flyblown, covered in scabs and scars, sick-pink, skinny bald, they raised their weary heads. Decided I wasn't worth the bother, went back to sleep.

An unholy trinity of donkeys wandered about the place: reformed ferals with wall eyes and sneaky teeth, they were furiously devouring any plant foolish enough to raise its head above the sand.

One old man—skinny, with a cowboy hat and a set of bulletproof spectacles—rose from a card game, shot a wad of tobacco into the dust and marched in my direction, his legs wondering where the horse had gone.

‘Why hello there, sergeant!' he shouted.

Excellent; a promotion already.

We shook hands, or at least palms. I only just managed to conceal my discomfort at the touch of leprous stumps where there should have been fingers.

He immediately launched into a story—as far as I could tell, which wasn't far since his English was poor, my Kantulyu worse and the twain didn't look like meeting. The narrative hopped about like a flea on a hot dog. Something about a copper, a camel and a mischievous spirit, a little hairy man much given to toying with sleepers' dreams and nose hairs who may or may not have been my interlocutor in another incarnation.

The tale could well have been the funniest ever told—certainly its raconteur seemed to think so—but after a confusing four or five minutes I began searching for an escape route.

I was rescued by Meg Brambles, who came over, limping and grinning. ‘Shut up you old fool,' she laughed—a sentiment with which he expressed hearty agreement.

‘It's that outfit you wearin,' she explained. ‘Mister Watson used to be a police tracker—got you mixed up with some other policeman he met along the way.'

She showed me the remnants of the stone house for which the community had been named. Not much more than a tumbledown chimney now, but seventy years ago it was the residence of a Spanish missionary who'd started out on canticles and altar wine, ended up a roaring drunk and father to half a dozen little yellerfellers.

Meg drew me into the circle of women sitting under a mulga tree, and I spent the next hour or two in their company—scratching away at a scrawny garden of watermelon and grapes, lugging water from the pump, helping decipher a Wordfind book somebody had scavenged from the Bluebush tip.

I met one woman about my own age: Kitty O'Keelly, tall and slim, with deep-set eyes and generous hair, beautiful when her mouth was shut—which it hardly ever was. After listening to her round up—and on—the kids, I prayed to god she never got stuck into me.

There was one old man I sensed to be the centre of something. He was nestled under a wirewood tree, eyes half shut against the glare, legs crossed. People cast tentative glances in his direction, as if they were waiting for him to give the all-clear.

He was fiddling with a tinny cassette player from which the unctuous tones of Garth Brooks fluttered and wowed. Eventually, he climbed to his feet and hobbled over with the aid of two sticks, stooped so low you'd have thought he carried his father on his back. Danny went out and helped him in; they were close, it was clear.

When they drew near I realised the problem wasn't that the old feller's eyes were half-shut against the glare, it was that they were fully shut against the world. The poor bastard was blind. Sandy Blight they call it out here: trachoma, a disease that affects a lot of our old people.

His name was Eli Japanangka Windmill. He was wearing baggy pants and a baggier beard, a stockman's hat and a pigeon-coloured singlet. His handshake was soft, but there was a reflex energy about it that suggested he must have been powerfully built before age and affliction laid him low.

‘You welcome, Missus. Where your mob from?'

‘Grew up at Moonlight Downs but my mum, she come from the Gulf.'

‘Saltwater country.' He nodded thoughtfully.

‘Yuwayi.'

‘You be stoppin 'ere tonight?'

‘If that's okay?'

‘Yuwayi, you welcome. Kurlupartu, innit?' he enquired.

‘Copper? Yeah, sort of.'

He seemed to find this amusing, then said, ‘Blackfeller missus one all right—bringin back this boy bilonga we.'

Giving Danny a lift had been a smarter move than I realised.

‘Yeah, he wanted a bit of peace and quiet; too much trouble in town.'

‘Yuwayi.' He turned his sightless eyes to the north, shook his head. ‘Drink—make a man mad.'

He didn't say much more; indeed, I suspected he knew everything about me before he'd opened his mouth. But when Danny led him back to his nook, I felt like I'd been given an imprimatur.

Bodycombe

STONEHOUSE HADN'T STRUCK ME
as the kind of place where visitors would be dropping in on a regular basis, so I was surprised when we heard an engine revving in the distance.

‘Who's this?' I asked Meg. We were sitting picking nits out of the kids' hair.

She put a hand to her ear. ‘Preacher feller—man of God.'

Sure enough a vehicle which, like the great white shark, came with its own ambience, rolled into camp. It was a massive four-wheel-drive campervan, clearly fitted with all the comforts of home. On its door, a logo lifted from a fast-food franchise and the words
Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship
.

The Aboriginal Evangelical Fellow himself—Pastor Bodycombe, I recalled from our meeting at the roadhouse—stepped down from the cab, headed for Magpie. Gave him an enthusiastic crunch of the metacarpals and a slap of the shoulders, and proceeded to press any other flesh that couldn't get out of the way fast enough. He did the rounds Canberra-style, rabbiting on in pidgin, making a show of tasting bush tucker. Licking his lips at a witchetty grub and grinning: ‘Mmmm—proper juicy one!' I wouldn't have been surprised if he whipped out the dentures and tried to stun the natives with his whitefeller tooth magic.

Even without the patronising bullshit, the very existence of the fellow, the underlying arrogance of the missionary endeavour, annoyed the hell out of me. But I held back. This wasn't my country, and giving in to the familiar stirring of my hackles would only get me into trouble.

In any case, nobody else seemed to mind. They listened politely when he gave them a reading from the Bible, lined up when he dished out the bread and red cordial. They partook of the feeble food and feebler prayers, offered each other signs of peace, mumbled their agreement when he exhorted them to thank the Lord for His gifts.

I suffered it all in silence—until the very end. As the pastor was packing away the tools of his trade, he spotted the demolition donkeys in the distance.

‘Ah—God's ponies!'

‘What that?' asked Meg.

‘The donkeys.' He favoured us with a knowing smile. ‘That animal Jesus bin ride.'

That was too much. I tilted my hat back, took a swig of tea, raised the cup at him. ‘I wouldn't get too excited, padre. So did Bruno.'

‘Sorry?' The pastor turned around, trying to settle on the source of this puzzling intervention. Sussed me out.

‘Bruno Giordano. Figured out the earth revolved around the sun. Your mob put him on a donkey and paraded him through the streets of Rome, then burned him alive.'

He blinked. ‘My mob?'

‘Friars of St John the Beheaded.'

He jerked his head back. ‘Hardly my mob.'

‘Oh, sorry—thought you were a Christian.'

He would have scratched his chin if there'd been one to scratch. ‘And you would be…?'

‘Emily Tempest.'

‘Have we met before?'

‘Green Swamp, the day Doc died.'

A cattle prod smile. ‘Ah yes, I remember.'

‘I was with the cops.'

‘Quite.'

The smile didn't budge, looked like it had been whittled into his face. But when he climbed back into his truck soon afterwards, he glanced back at me, and the eyes boiled with malevolence. Somebody had stolen his pissy little thunder and he wasn't happy.

Ground work

WHEN THE MAN OF
God had gone, I went and sat on the ground next to Magpie and Meg. The former was using a screwdriver to tackle the encrustation of grass seeds that was stuffing up the radiator of his HQ Holden, the latter was issuing orders.

‘Ah, you oughta use that brush thing!'

Magpie leaned over, extracted a wire brush from a briefcase.

‘You look like a stockbroker,' I informed him, nodding at the case.

‘Well I'm broke all right,' he answered ruefully. He had an appealing habit of raising a brow when something struck him as amusing. Since just about everything did, his default expression was one of happy astonishment.

I checked out his tool bag, which was actually an old map case with leather loops and a brass buckle on the strap. It was half open: I spotted a water bottle, a blue folder, a Stanley knife, a compass with the cover missing and a cloven bone. He could only have come across a bag like that at the op-shop. Or the town tip, another popular outfitting source. Magpie by name, magpie by nature.

Time to raise the real reason for my visit. ‘You mob knew that old kartiya from the roadhouse—the one who passed away the other day?'

They looked serious. The old man put down the brush, poured us all a cup of tea.

‘Yuwayi—we bin meet him,' said Meg. ‘Doc, innit?'

‘That's him. Danny told me he used to go out bush with that Jupurulla, the one who's finished up now.'

‘Yuwayi—they bin make a lotta trips together.'

I was tempted to ask more, but we were treading on dangerous ground. Death brings up a battery of taboos round here.

I showed them Doc's photo.

‘You wouldn't know this place, would you?'

Magpie studied it with an intense curiosity—not that that told me much: Magpie would have studied his morning cuppa with intense curiosity. Finally he stroked his little mustache and said, ‘More better we show to old Windmill.'

This'll be interesting, I thought, wondering what a blind man would make of a photograph.

We took the photo over to Eli, sitting in his shelter nursing a pannikin of tea.

The two men rattled away in Kantulyu, Magpie—from what I could understand—describing the scattered rocks in the foreground, the fluted slopes, the rugged summit.

Eli scratched the ground, produced what might have been a map.

‘Irinipatta,' he announced.

‘Irinipatta? That's its name?'

‘Yuwayi. Fire dreamin place,' said Eli. ‘North-west from 'ere.' He tilted his chin and pointed with his lips in that direction. ‘Whitefeller call it…what that one?'

‘Dingo Springs,' said Magpie.

‘Yuwayi. That Dingo. Little bit long way.'

Suddenly I understood. Magpie knew perfectly well what the photo showed. But Irinipatta—Dingo Springs—was Eli's dreaming. Only he had the right to speak on its behalf.

‘You been there, Japanangka?' I asked him.

‘Foot walkin days.' He launched into a few bars of a song, tugged his beard, laughed. ‘Since when I got no whiskers!'

Magpie's gaze drifted across to the Cockburn Toyota and a hungry look stole into his eyes. ‘Maybe we might take you out there ourselves?' he beamed hopefully.

I sussed him out straightaway. Rediscovering traditional country was always a struggle. The environment was degraded by thirty years' neglect. Overrun with feral pests and plants, the wells grown over, many of the animals vanished. These people were mostly old, their knowledge and their bodies fading. Motor cars were as crucial a resource as spearthrowers and water carriers had ever been. The police Cruiser, with its long-range tanks, its winch and water, a radio in the dash and a sister at the wheel, was a mouth-watering opportunity.

My first reaction was, hell yes. But did I have enough fuel? I regretted not taking the opportunity to fill up at Green Swamp.

Cockburn's new toy: I shivered, examined the Cruiser nervously. A bush bash through the toughest terrain in the world was perhaps not what he'd had in mind when he gave me the keys.

Bugger it. It was still a police vehicle, and what I was doing was police business. Sort of maybe. I'd just make sure I took good care of it.

My confidence vanished when I woke up the next morning and discovered that the kids had scratched their names into the paintwork on the back door.

‘Jesus,' I muttered, running a hand across the scrawl.

‘Jesus' indeed—He was right there, His name hacked in among the Rufuses and Wesleys. Pastor Bodycombe had more influence in this place than I'd realised.

Swallowing my fear, I switched on the radio.

‘Bluebush 350 to base. Do you read me? Over.'

‘Base to Bluebush 350.' Shit. Cockburn himself. ‘Morning, Emily. What's your location? Over.'

‘Still out at Stonehouse Creek, sir. Over.'

‘You looking after that vehicle? Over.'

I managed to skirt the issue of the paintwork enhancement, but he wasn't impressed when I told him we were heading to Dingo Springs.

‘You're heading where? Over.'

‘Dingo Springs. Over.'

‘Where the hell's that? Over.'

‘Somewhere to the west. Over.'

‘Somewhere!' His irritation crackled through the static. ‘What's that supposed to mean? Perth? Who are you travelling with? Over.'

I took a look at the waiting crowd: rampaging kids, old men with miscellaneous bones hanging out of their pockets. A dog with a head like a wet wedding cake wandered by, a plume of flies unreeling behind it. Good god, it had a turd-filled sock hanging out of its anus.

No hitchhikers.

‘Sorry sir, you're breaking up. Poor reception area. Over.'

‘You be careful with…'

‘I'll try again in the morning. Over.'

‘Listen to…'

I switched the radio off. The receiver shuddered, and so did I.