Moonlight Downs (19 page)

The Sandhill Gong woz her

I CAME home that afternoon to find the neighbours standing in little clusters out on the footpath, talking at each other in an animatedly un-Territorian manner and gesticulating at their apartments. There were about twenty of them, most of them blokes, none of them happy.

I got out of the car, wondering whether this was a party I should be crashing.

Two of those at the back of the crowd turned around and gave me the evil eye: Ernie Ratzavic—Ratsarse to his friends—and his drinking buddy, the globular Slim Timms, who dressed like an extra in a Clint Eastwood movie but was in fact manager of the town laundromat.

I walked over, curiosity outweighing my instinctive caution.

‘Evening fellers,’ I said. ‘What’s going on? Bit of neighbourhood bonding?’

Aside from a little shared sneer, they ignored me and returned their attention to Rex Griffiths, who seemed to be in charge of the proceedings.

Rex was in mufti, or as close to mufti as your off-duty Bluebush copper could get—in his case this meant stubbies, thongs and a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Great Aussie Bloke’—but he was still playing the cop. He had the tongue and the notebook out, the pen in the hand, the frown on the forehead, and was assiduously scribbling notes as the crowd called out to him.

‘Then there was my set of Micro Trend Diamond Steel knives,’ growled Ernie.

‘And a slab of beer,’ Slim put in hopefully.

‘CD player,’ said Hardy Stein.

‘A meat axe,’ spat some swivel-eyed blue singlet who looked as mad as one.

‘Shit,’ said Griffo, ‘what did they have, a road train? How many of em were there?’

‘And a money jar,’ said Charlie Cleland. ‘Must have had forty bucks in it.’

‘Forty bucks!’ retorted his flatmate, Mal Hanson. ‘You wouldn’t have forty bucks in the bank!’

Charlie looked offended. ‘The money jar
is
my bank. What about the chainsaw? I had a Stihl chainsaw, perfect workin order.’

‘Perfect fuckin workin order my arse,’ muttered Mal. ‘You left it out the Blue Moon months ago.’

During a momentary lull in the proceedings Ernie pointed in my direction. ‘Why don’t we ask our little black lady if she knows anything about it?’

I raised my hands, palms upwards, tried to make myself a smaller target. ‘Will somebody tell me what’s going on?’

‘We’ve had a break-in,’ Griffiths responded. ‘Lot of break-ins. Half the flats have had their back doors reefed open. They would have done the other half if Bones here hadn’t been asleep on the couch when they tried his place.’

Bones, named either for his occupation as a meatworker or his skeletal physique, gave his audience a modest wave of acknowledgment and a flash of yellow teeth that may have been intended as a smile.

‘Bunch of coon kids,’ he said. ‘Give em a hell of a fright.’

‘Bones’d give Freddy Krueger a hell of a fright,’ somebody threw in, but I wasn’t hanging around. I stomped over to my own place and unlocked the front door.

Sure enough, the back door had been forced open, the flat ransacked. The saving grace was that there hadn’t been much worth stealing. As far as I could tell, all I’d lost was a couple of beers from the fridge, a bit of cash from the bedside table and a CD by my favourite ragged-arsed blackfeller band, the Warumpis
.
My books, I was grateful to see, were untouched; books were never a hot item on the Bluebush black market.

I went back outside and reported my losses to Griffiths.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ pressed one of the mob.

Griffiths didn’t look comfortable. ‘Mate. There’s what, six, seven hundred black kids in this town. You expect me to round em all up and shake em down?’

‘Hey!’ yelled Bones, looking like he’d just risen out of a grave, ‘there’s one of em now!’

I followed his outstretched finger and saw Lenny Coulter strolling towards us from the bush end of the court, his eyes half closed, his mouth moving. He was wearing low-rider jeans, a Bombers baseball cap and a discman. Scratchy rap music hissed out of his headphones.

‘Oi!’ called Griffo, advancing towards him. ‘You!’

Lenny seemed oblivious to the threat until he opened his eyes and saw a mountain of Bluebush constabulary rumbling towards him, upon which he did what any other camp kid would have done: turned on his heels and ran. Griffo gave chase, but he was no match for Lenny, who moved with an astonishing speed considering the pants. He wove his way around the pack, cleared a fence, galloped down the yards and headed for the highway.

Several younger members of the mob tried to cut him off but he spotted the move and changed direction. One eye on his back, he hared off on a course which, I realised with horror, led straight into the path of the four wheel drive that had just come cruising round the corner.

The driver was fortunately on the ball. The vehicle slammed to a halt centimetres from the fleeing Lenny, who grasped the bull-bar, gave a brief wave of acknowledgment, then disappeared into the bush across the road.

The driver emerged from the cabin. Another cop, I thought. Then I spotted the red beanie.

‘Hang on, fellers,’ Jojo said as the mob reached him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Little fucker just broke into our houses,’ gasped Bones.

‘Lenny?’ Jojo glanced into the bush. ‘Not his usual style.’

‘Him and his mates. Flogged everythin they could lay their hands on.’

I joined them. ‘We don’t know that it was Lenny at all,’ I said. ‘I think he might have just chosen the wrong moment to take a short-cut through the court.’

‘Emily Tempest! Don’t tell me they hit you too?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘Surprised they had the nerve. Let’s have a look.’

As he parked his car, Griffo muttered something about the CIB and drove off. The rest of the crowd slowly dispersed.

Jojo and I walked back into the court. I led him into my flat, showed him the broken door, told him what was missing.

‘Oh no, not the Warumpis! Which one?’

‘
Big Name No Blankets.
’

‘Oh man, the classic.’

He went out into the little piece of scorched earth that passed for a yard, crouched on his haunches, then leaned forward and made a close examination of the dirt. He glanced at my own feet, then looked back at the scuff-marks on the ground. He scratched the surface, scooped up a tiny amount of sand between thumb and forefinger, studied it, let it drift away. He walked in the direction of the back fence, slowly and carefully, his brow crumpled, his eyes never leaving the ground. He stood on a railing and looked out into the alley.

I watched with interest.

‘What do you reckon?’ I asked when he came back.

‘Half a dozen of em,’ he replied with a surprising confidence. ‘Eleven, maybe twelve years old. Two in bare feet, two in trainers, one in thongs, another in scruffy boots. One’s wearing a white sweatshirt, another’s in a green baseball cap and a moth-eaten red singlet. Biggest boy’s got a limp. Little feller’s got a runny nose and a bung eye.’

I almost fell off the porch. ‘That’s the most amazing piece of tracking I’ve ever seen. You got all that from just looking around the yard?’

‘More or less.’

‘That’s better than Pepper and Arch could have done.’

He smiled modestly. ‘Dunno if I’d go that far.’

‘I mean, I can see how you could work out their footwear, limps and whatnot, but how the hell do you know about the bung eyes and baseball caps?’

‘Trade secret,’ he said as he headed for the back door. ‘But you might want to have a look at the alley.’

I walked out through the gate. The neighbour’s Alsatian put on its usual performance, but I was getting used to it. There was a message sprayed onto the back fence in bright red paint and letters two foot high: SANDHILL GONG WOZ HER.

‘Russell Kutuju and his cousins,’ Jojo called from inside the flat. ‘Known to everybody in town as the Sandhill Gang. I saw them sneaking back into camp five minutes ago.’

While I scouted around for something to throw at him, he made his way to the front door. ‘Love to stay and enjoy your hospitality, Ms Tempest, but I better go and have a word with them before they get rid of the loot. Back in an hour or so.’

I followed him out onto the veranda, watched as he got into his Toyota and drove away.

I went inside and showered. Found myself scanning the meagre contents of my wardrobe, feeling suddenly skittish. Pulled myself up. Knock it off, I said to myself. You’re acting like a girl, and a bloody white girl at that. I brought myself back down to earth by knocking up a batch of scones.

An hour later the Landcruiser came rattling back up the drive. Jojo emerged from the cabin, went round and began speaking to the occupants, many of whom immediately jumped into their vehicles and disappeared. By the time he’d made it to the fourth flat most of the neighbourhood had assembled on the lawn.

‘A few of you already know,’ he called out, ‘but to save wear and tear on the tonsils, I’ll tell you
en masse
. The cops have recovered a number of items which they believe were stolen this afternoon. If you make your way down to the police station, you’ll be able to claim what’s yours…’

Most of them were gone before he finished the sentence.

I was sitting on the veranda, watching with amusement.

‘Hey, Jojo!’

He ambled over towards me.

‘Emily.’

‘Who’s on the desk down at the station? He’s going to need the wisdom of Solomon to sort that lot out.’

‘Rex was there a few minutes ago.’

‘Bloody hell.’

His smile faded. ‘You wouldn’t be taking the piss out of our thin khaki line, would you?’

‘Pretty fat fuckin thin line in his case. Oh well, I don’t suppose there’ll be much competition for my Warumpis.’

‘Shouldn’t be any,’ he said, reaching into his pocket, pulling out a CD and dropping it into my lap.

‘
Big Name No Blankets
! How the hell did you manage that?’

‘I know those boys. Wasn’t that long ago I was leading a similar sort of life myself. Limited number of places you could hide a stash like that between here and the camp. Took me about five minutes to find it. Big beefwood on the edge of the mulga, west of the camp.’

‘Well, thanks very much. I suppose the least I could do is offer you a beer. And I would if the boys hadn’t flogged it all. How about a cup of tea?’

‘Won’t say no.’

‘And a scone?’

‘Now you’re talking.’

‘Pull up a slab of concrete.’

I went inside and loaded up the tea-tray. When I came back out he was sitting down, his back against a post, his legs fully stretched, his eyes closed. He casually waved away a blowie which settled on his knee, then opened his eyes.

‘Strewth,’ he exclaimed when he spotted the scones. ‘You didn’t tell me they were fresh out of the oven.’ He took a bite, followed up with a swig of tea. ‘Mmmm. Have to see if I can get you burgled more often.’

‘So did you catch the culprits?’

‘Not my job. But I did have a word with Ditch Williams. You know him?’

‘Know the name.’

‘He’s their uncle; asked me to take em out to Kupulyu Creek. Figures a spell out bush’ll do em good.’

Kupulyu Creek. I’d heard of it. Like Moonlight, a fledgling community, a little band of people struggling to escape time’s gravitational pull. Kantiji country, a few hours to the south-east.

I settled back into the wickerwork chair, pulled my feet up underneath. A minute or two drifted by as we quietly worked our way through the scones.

‘So who are you, Jojo?’

He raised a brow. ‘Who am I?’

‘You seem so at home around here. You can spot a witchdoctor in the dark. You listen to the Warumpis. You know where the townboys stash the loot. But you didn’t grow up round here.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘You’re—what, twenty-seven, twenty-eight? I’d have come across you. But you do sound local: got that parched-out Territorian drawl, the sun-dried eyes.’

‘I first come up to the Centre when I was eight years old. Me and me mum.’

‘Just the two of you? Like me and Jack.’

‘I suppose so. Grace was an arts coordinator on various communities out from Alice. Yuendumu. Ernabella. Spent a year living out of a swag on the outstations west of Papunya. She had a rather… how would you put it?…chaotic idea of parenting. Long as she had a paint brush in her hands, she didn’t notice what I was up to. I spent more time running around the bush with a mob of little mates than I did in the classroom. Then we moved in to Alice, only there running wild meant something different. Something a lot more dangerous.’

‘So how come you didn’t end up in some gutter?’

‘I spent plenty of time in gutters, actually. Or I would have if they’d had gutters where I was lying.’

‘Yeah, but you’re not still there. What happened?’

‘Shit, you are a pushy little thing, aren’t you?’ He stared off into the scrub across the road, ran his fingers through the sand and said, ‘I suppose the bush is what happened.’

I waited.

‘When I was eighteen,’ he continued, ‘I picked up a casual job delivering stores out to the stations. Spent a couple of days marooned by a flooded river and found myself thinking about what I’d left behind when we came to Alice. You know. The colours, the kids, the waterholes. Thought how much I missed them.’