Gunshot Road (19 page)

All for nothing

I SPENT THE NEXT
couple of days in a hospital bed, a foetal position and a dark blue funk. Curtains drawn and a plate of untouched food coming and going from the table. All I wanted to do was drink—water, gallons of the stuff. There was something inside me I couldn't wash away.

Sounds drifted in from outside. The Bluebush dawn chorus: the baying of the dogs, the screaming of the drunks. They were how I told night from day; apart from that, the world was a blurred fug of intersecting pains and punishing thoughts.

Physically, they assured me, there was nothing much wrong: battered and blue I might have been, covered in stitches and scars and sticking plaster, missing a tooth or two. But there were no bones broken, no vital organs damaged.

Emotionally, it was a different matter. Rage and shame, deaf to reason, swept through me in storms that tore away the flimsy tarps lashed above my soul.

The hard-nosed doctor, the one I'd met before, whose name turned out to be Marta Kokinos, proved to be surprisingly considerate. Patching up sexually assaulted black women was obviously an area in which you developed an expertise in Bluebush.

People tried to see me; I told Marta I didn't want visitors, and she was ferocious defending my privacy.

The first intruder to get through the stone curtain was the last person I wanted to see. Bruce Cockburn came strutting into the room late on the second afternoon, hair polished, hat in hand, uniform neatly pressed. Face the same but more so. I couldn't have cared less if I never saw the needle-brained bastard again.

But there were, it seemed, matters arising.

‘Emily.'

I looked up at him through swollen, gooey eyes. ‘Sir.'

That was as far as the conversation got before there was a crash of doors and a bearish figure came charging into the room in his wake. He had Cockburn up against the wall and gasping for breath before I knew what was happening: my father, looking for someone to kill.

Since I'd already killed the appropriate someone, he must have decided the acting super was the next best thing.

‘You the fuckwit filling in for Tom McGillivray?'

Cockburn's response was a strangulated gurgle.

‘What did you think you were doing, letting an innocent young girl loose among the scum-sucking lowlife sliming around this cesspit of a town?'

Cockburn, despite a twenty-year age advantage and what I suspected was a more than adequate ability, seemed strangely disinclined to defend himself. I did it for him.

‘Keep your shirt on, Jack,' I croaked. ‘Innocent? Give us all a break. He warned me not to go sniffing around—I went sniffing around. Poked me nose in. Wasn't his fault I got it bit off.'

He pressed the policeman deeper into the wall, actually lifted him off his feet.

‘Jack!' I watched Cockburn turn purple, his precise little teeth wondering which way to turn. ‘That's not gonna help!'

He ignored me. I grabbed a cup of water from the table and threw it at his broad back. He looked around, dropped his bundle. Came over and wrapped me in an ursine embrace.

‘Jeez, honey, Emily darling, I just heard…I was out bush.'

Were those just my own tears I could feel running down my cheeks?

‘It's okay, Dad.' I patted him on the back, rubbed what was left of his hair. ‘It's over now.'

‘It is.' I felt his whiskers scrape my cheek.

‘I'll survive.'

‘You will.'

‘And I even managed to achieve something.'

He raised his head, lowered his brow. ‘What was that?'

I peered over his shoulder, tried to catch Cockburn's eye. Found it surprisingly difficult to do so. The supercilious sneer was nowhere to be seen.

‘Get Wireless off the hook.'

Cockburn looked up, then away, then down, cleared his throat.

‘Come on,' I persisted. ‘You can't possibly hold him now.'

‘Emily…'

‘We know Paisley was at the roadhouse that day. He's a convicted drug dealer, a homicidal maniac, a career criminal with a violent history. Surely it's obvious: Doc stumbled across his plantation, threatened to turn him in. Paisley was as cunning a jackal as ever walked the earth. There's no way a jury would convict Wireless now; I'll tell em if you won't.'

I caught Cockburn and Jack glancing at each other in a way I didn't like the look of.

‘What?' I growled at the policeman. ‘Have you idiots even figured out that Paisley's the front runner for Doc's demise? That's why I was checking him out.'

‘We have,' he mumbled, finding his tongue at last. ‘Be up to the Coroner to decide, but it's looking that way.'

‘Looking! What's it gotta do—jump down your bloody throat? Go over the evidence, see if you can find anything to put him in the frame.'

‘We have gone over the evidence.'

‘Well?'

‘You're right,' he sighed. ‘Paisley was at the murder scene. Can't say when, but his prints have shown up among the ones we collected.'

‘Have you looked around his workshop?'

‘Commercial quantities of speed and ganja hidden in a gas bottle. Con Panopoulos has fessed up: Paisley had a plantation out on the Gunshot, Con was doing the deliveries. Jenkins has checked it out.'

I raised myself, shook a bandaged fist at him.

‘Well what are you waiting for? Why isn't it Goodbye Hop-head and Welcome Home Wireless?'

After an arduous silence, Jack took my hand in one of his great paws. ‘Wireless died a couple of days ago.'

I blinked, shook my head, sank back into the pillow. ‘No.'

‘Alice Springs. In the Big House.'

I turned away. Stared at the wall.

All for nothing. All that.

I'd been tortured and tormented, shattered and battered blacker than I already was, forced to put down a couple of mad dogs—all so that poor old Wireless could turn up his toes in the last place on earth he'd have wanted to.

Freedom and fresh air, a refusal to fit into the straitjacket of society, a hunger for time and space to spin the bullshit and grumble about the world: they were what had driven those old eccentrics out to Gunshot Road in the first place, those were the values that sustained them. They might not have seemed much to a straight-as-a-gun barrel autocrat like Cockburn, but they were all Wireless had. For him to die in some rat-stinking cell for something he hadn't done was more than I could bear.

Cockburn mangled his syntax and his hat. ‘Stroke; massive. Probably going to happen no matter where…'

I glared at him. ‘Oh, just get out of here.'

‘We did nothing un…'

‘You're damned right you did nothing.'

‘We followed standard operating procedures…'

‘Get out!' I spotted my police shirt poking out of a drawer, ripped it out and threw it at him. ‘And you can take this and stick it up your standard operating procedures with a very long pole.'

Doctor Marta appeared, bustled them out of the room, held my hand, offered me a shot of something. Whatever it was it worked: I curled back into a ball, stared out a tear-stained window and fell asleep weeping.

Moving out there still

WHEN I CAME TO
, it was night time. And I felt…

It was time to go.

Suddenly I'd had enough of this white-feller environment, its sterilised air, its marble sheets and stainless steel. Its coppers who cart you off and kill you with their standard operating procedures.

I wanted out, the sooner the better.

I climbed to my feet, came close to falling right back down, head dipping and heaving, stomach the same. Floors and windows flying in every direction. My mouth felt like it had a dead rat in it.

I sat on the edge of the bed, breathed deep, tried again. Fell over. Had somebody given me a transfusion of wet cement?

I had another go and made it upright this time.

I rummaged through the bedside chest. Found some Drum tobacco and papers; Dad must have put them there, bless the cranky old bastard. I couldn't find much in the way of clothes, but. I settled for the dainty blue dressing gown I found in the drawer. Not that I needed it for warmth; it would still be hot outside, but I wanted something to cover the bare bum I could feel bobbing out the back of my hospital gown.

As I stepped out into the corridor, a sharp call cut through the pharmaceutical air.

‘You! Stop there.' Doctor Marta's voice.

Not aimed at me. Gunther Blitzen was creeping down the other end of the corridor, one arm in a sling, the other attached to a drip. He gestured at it.

‘It's got wheels,' he complained. ‘What else are they for?'

‘To help you get up and go to the toilet so a nurse doesn't have to come and wipe your big hairy bottom.'

‘Just a quick snort—it's nearly closing time.'

Gunther had a rep round town, but he'd met his match in Marta. ‘Back to bed!'

I hobbled off in the opposite direction, wandered a maze of corridors, went through a door and found myself out on the hospital lawn. Sat on a bench. Fired up a ciggie, sucked the guts out of it and felt the warm night air lilting across my skin.

I devoured that first sweet smoke, hurried on to the next. Thought long and hard about how I'd fucked up. Poor bloody old Wireless. What a way to go. And what had I done to help him? Stuff all.

Somewhere in the midst of that blistering self-assessment I became aware that there were shadowy figures moving along the pavement opposite. As they moved in and out of a streetlight's arc, I recognised them: the Wilyaku crew, a trio of Crankshafts, a couple of Whiskey sisters.

A few minutes later Elsie Waterman and Cynthia Winton wandered by, Alf Tuckerberry hot on their heels. Alf had fought his way round the country with Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Tent but the closest he came to a box these days was the cardboard one he slept in.

They were moving with a surprisingly lively step. Either there was a free feed on somewhere or somebody had cracked a keg.

Without quite knowing why, I stood up, drew the gown around my shoulders and followed them. I took vague pleasure in the concrete under my feet, felt the pain recede, ever so slightly, the life come creeping back into my limbs as the blood flowed.

As we drew close to the centre of town, I realised there were more walkers behind me, too far back to recognise but chattering happily and tossing jokes around. Coils of laughter peeled off into the dark.

Gradually the crowd thickened: the old and the young, the hobbled and the halt, they came wandering in from alleyways and side streets, from creaking gates and fallen doors. I drifted along in the comforting anonymity of the night.

We were almost up to the main street when I realised where we were headed: the Bluebush Memorial Hall, whence the sound of music told me there was a party going on. I felt the bass before I heard it, a frenzied riff shivering air. As I drew closer, I recognised that unique blend of reggae/country/Pacific Islander blues that could mean only one thing: the Coral Cowboys were back in business.

I remembered Bandy Mabulu telling me he had a gig organised. This must be it.

I didn't fancy making an appearance in my present state, so I snuck around the back of the hall, tried to peek in through a window. I was about to tackle one of the scraggy bushes along the wall when a nearby door flew open—somebody wanting a smoke or a snog. A storm of light and sound came blowing out.

Bandy was on stage, his powerful voice belting out over the crowd. Ricochet was laying on the harmonies and Lefty was doing an amazing job on the skins, his one good arm covering more ground than a Japanese tennis player.

Everybody was up on the dance floor. There were no spectators at an event like this: pensioners bopping about on skinny lizard legs, snotty-nosed toddlers running rings around the room, shipwrecked cowboys in tattooed boots, rock and roll girls in spangled tops adorned with meaningless phrases like
Aerial Ways
and
Shot of Love
. And they were beautiful when they moved, a rainbow explosion of pure joy as the music formed and dissolved around them.

I sat with my back against a peppercorn tree, watching. Felt a tear slide down my face. I closed my eyes; was surprised, when I opened them again, to see that the dancers were still there. They seemed like more than I deserved.

Later on, some bloke from the crowd—shaggy britches, baggy belly, raggedy-ann hair—shambled up onto the stage. At just about any other venue in the world he would have been thrown out on his ear. Bandy put an arm around him and passed him a guitar.

‘Listen up, you mob,' he called out to the crowd. ‘We gotta special treat from a great man!'

As the newcomer approached the mic, I recognised him: Kenny Wednesday, a Kantulyu feller who lived at the Gutter Camp. These days Kenny and sobriety were at best nodding acquaintances, but when he was young he'd been the main man for Buffalo Express, the best of the early bands around here.

The audience hushed, expectant.

‘Evenin folks,' Kenny grinned. Unleashed several megawatts of dormant rock-star charisma. ‘Gonna send yez off to bed with a new song. Hot off the strings, eh?'

He struck a minor chord, broke it open into a rippling arpeggio. A floating, waltz-time ballad lilted out from the stage.

My brother move through time and light
Like a mirror through the hills
A star-black fire dreamin man
The one they couldn't kill
He took a spear, he took a swag
He singing up a storm
He light a fire, the rain come down
The country being born
He walkin round the waterholes
West of the wheeling mills
They say he's gone, but me I know
He's moving out there still

By the time the chorus came round, the rest of the band were playing along:

Beyond the broken bottle
Beyond the white man's will
They say he's gone, but me I know
He's moving out there still

Kenny's voice was a subterranean growl, but somewhere among its cracks and crevices lurked a sweet melody.

I had no idea what the song was about. Who was moving out where still? He'd said something in the opening line about a brother. As far as I could recall, Kenny didn't have a brother, but then ‘brother' could mean all sorts of things round here. Anybody in the same skin group—one in eight males—was a brother. Any mate could be called ‘brother'. Any other blackfeller was a bro. He could have been talking about anyone. Only…

Andulka, the mystery nomad. He was a Jungarayi. He and Kenny even shared the same dreaming: fire.

Once again it seemed Andulka, dead for years—blown up and buried under a mountain at Green Saturn—was acting as a lightning rod for his people's spirit.

The man himself was unimportant. A shiver in the wind, a spike in the sun's glare; it was what he stood for that mattered. Andulka loomed large in their collective imagination. They saw him crafting a solitary path out there, moving down dry waterways, over the cracking blacksoil plains. They felt the great song cycles surge through his bones. In him, the stories came to life, the past became present.

I thought about the dance-hall audience before me, the drunk and the disabled, the petrol sniffers and Thursday night fighters, the very old and the very young.

My people.

I seem to have spent most of my life on the road, running from what I never knew. But watching Kenny and the crowd, it struck me that we're all wanderers in one way or another, we're all looking for a home.

The women in the audience: god only knew how many of them had been raped or battered and abused in their lives. Probably most of them. And they'd survived.

For the first time I knew, deep in my body, what I'd been telling my brain for the last two days.

I would too.