The Burial (20 page)

OCTOBER NOW. A month or more since she had gone and the only trace of the September winds and storms was a subdued whistling that came and went. Jack Brown's horse hustled back and forth and then there was just the tinkling of stirrups and buckles, the slapping of leather against flanks, and he would have preferred to be harboured by some din, than to be alone with the sounds of himself, a horse, a gun.

He looked upon the great spread of the mountains. The blue mystery of their trace folded out into obscurity. It gave him no relief to contemplate them knowing that she was there, somewhere within the trees, the long stretches of scrub, the larger forest.

Now, as always, she felt as impossible as a dream.

Even riding with her, through grove or open field, he always felt that she was already far away, moving on some different path. And many days he felt his own horse was made of clay and they were being towed in her wake and all he could do was hold on and do his best not to slow her as she lit out at breakneck speed. She rode like she would not stop till she reached the horizon and there was no telling where her horse ended and where she began.

Was it love, then, to want to capture her?

It did not feel right to him. But in truth he had wanted her to be his.

His horse shifted sideways and back in the field. He turned his shoulder against the mountains and his horse followed the lead of his turned body and they moved towards the station hut.

He found Barlow crawling through the kitchen on hands and knees. He had his nose right down to the floor like a dog. Jack Brown leant against the doorframe and folded his arms. He watched Barlow following an ant trail that wound across the kitchen floor, disappeared behind a cupboard and then reappeared on the wall. He watched the sergeant angle his thin arm around the back of the cupboard and press his face flat against it as he twisted half of his body around to retrieve the perfect skeleton of a bird. He wasn't talking to Jack Brown when he said,
Look at that!

I am
, said Jack Brown.

Barlow clutched the bird against his chest and drew up his knees like a chastised child. He stared up at Jack Brown, his eyes pulsing in his head.

Must have flown in and died
, said Jack Brown.

The remains of the bird were strung together by ribbons of flesh that the ants were making short work of. Soon the ants were crawling all over Barlow and he brushed himself frantically with one hand, holding onto the bird with the other.

A pounding on the station door startled them both. Jack Brown was immune to Barlow's antics now so an unexpected visitor to the police hut was more bizarre than the scene in front of him. He opened the door in time to see the wide back of a man heading around the side of the hut.

Hey!
said Jack Brown.
What's your business here?

The man turned around to face him. His face was typical of most faces Jack Brown had seen in the valley. A face as sunburnt and soiled as old leather.

So someone's manning this hole after all. I was about to give up when I saw those horses in the yard and I thought nobody would be stupid enough to leave horses like that. Not even a city copper. Or his black tracker.

Word travels fast. How can I help you, sir?

Get me the big-city sergeant.

He's not here.

I'll wait.

Fair enough, just take a pew and we'll see if he's back by tomorrow morning.

The man sat down and surveyed the view from the hill.
And who are you anyway?
he asked.

Jack Brown. But you can call me the black tracker.

Expected you'd be blacker. Jack Brown, eh? I'm a cattleman. And one hundred head of my cattle has gone missing.
The man clicked his fingers.
Jack Brown, my cattle just fucking gone!

Any idea who did it?

The man dragged his feet in and sat forward.
Truth is it could have been any one of the desperate bastards around here. But one hundred—that's a real job. Those bastards usually just skim, like cream off the milk. But one hundred, that's the milk and the cream.

One hundred.

A real fucking vanishing act.

Where's your land?

Up there.
He pointed to the far mountains.
Near Phantom Ridge. Sidling up the north end.

Jack Brown knew it. A stretch of land against the northern band of the mountains. He had ridden through it with Jessie and they had skimmed some of the cattle for themselves.

How many days they been missing?

Five days or so. I've been out looking for signs of them myself. You'd think that one hundred head of cattle, they'd leave some trail. But this is the thing, Jack Brown—I couldn't even find a trace of their shit.
The man scratched his beard with his blunt fingers.
Not even a trace of shit.

The man stood up.
I've got no time to waste. Get some of your blackfella magic on to it. When cattle goes missing without a trace, it makes for a very uneasy feeling around here. There are ex-soldiers all over holed up in their huts. They're all guarding their shitty bit of land and a couple of skinny cows.

They're already spooked. They get word of this, a hundred head just vanished, and they'll be out with their guns shooting at the fucking dark wanting a bit of it themselves. They'll be racing around like fucking lame vigilantes.

The man walked along the veranda. Jack Brown followed him and watched him mount his horse.

We'll need someone to blame for this, Jack Brown, and I hear from good sources that an ex-convict woman is loose and she is famous for her rustling.

I haven't heard that
, said Jack Brown.
And surely you can't pin a hundred cattle on one woman.

Rumour is she killed her husband, too. Two birds with one stone, Jack Brown.

I'll report it to the sergeant.

You know
, said the man,
in the dark a copper and his tracker look the same as any other man.

Is that a threat, sir?

The man turned his horse.
We're still old-fashioned out here, Jack Brown. We like someone to blame.

The man took the reins out wide and then he rode away. Jack Brown watched until he was out of sight.

Back in the hut, Barlow was stretching out the wings of the bird as if he was trying to teach it to fly.

Do you think it's a sign, Jack Brown?

Yep
, said Jack Brown.
One day we're all gonna go the way of the bird.

We're going to fly?

Jack Brown could not hold himself back any longer. He picked up Barlow by the neck of his shirt and pressed him against the wall and said,
If you don't get yourself together, you are going to die.

Barlow started sobbing.
I don't want to die. I just want to find her.

Jack Brown dropped Barlow and he crumpled on the ground.
Give up that shit you're on.

I can't do it on my own. I need your help.

It's not my job.

It is your job to help me.

I'm the tracker, not your nurse.

Just give me a week. Throw me in the cell. Give me food and water and for fuck's sake don't open the door.

The third night in the cell, Barlow screamed out to Jack Brown,
Get her out! She's under my bed. Her bony fucking finger is tracing down my back.

Jack Brown was dressed in his underpants but he went into the cell anyway. He lit a candle and waved it under Barlow's bed. There was nothing there. He swiped his hand beneath it to show Barlow but when he looked up Barlow had gone.

The back door of the hut was wide open and Jack Brown could see Barlow running through the grass, crying,
She's gonna fucking get me!

Jack Brown chased him down the slope and tackled him to the ground.

She's there, I know she's fucking in there. She's got this screwed-up face and I can feel her finger in my back and she was pulling at my hair and—

Jack Brown punched Barlow and knocked him out. He carried him back inside and laid him down on the bed in the cell.

That night he sat on the veranda listening to Barlow's moaning. What good was a sergeant? he thought. And what good was a sergeant who had lost his mind?

Two days later Barlow was quiet in his cell. Jack Brown gave him food through the bars and Barlow said,
I think it's over.

We'll head off at first light tomorrow
, said Jack Brown.

Jack Brown wasted no time. He got on his horse and rode to Lay Ping. He undressed her and ran his hands over her back and traced the figures tattooed across her shoulders and down her spine.

There was a god and goddess, deities that he did not recognise. They were bearing down on a waterfall and within the waterfall was everything they had given life to: all mountains, all rocks, all creatures, all sliding down into the dip of her back and her hips.

And then: sorrow.

Who is this?
he said, touching the god on her shoulder, whose eyes were inflamed with rage.

This is Izangi
, said Lay Ping as she twisted her long hair around her hand.
He is in a fit of jealousy and soon he will tumble into the waterfall and sink down into the world beneath the rocks.

And what happens there?
asked Jack Brown.

He will be eaten by demons.

Jack Brown lay on the bed. And then Lay Ping lay on top of him. He closed his eyes. There he saw the world beneath the rocks, the world that her skin did not reveal.

THE STATION OWNER at Phantom Ridge did not wait for Barlow, the big-city sergeant, to take any action at all. He had his men post Wanted signs of Jessie around the valley. They collected a wedding photo from the postmaster. There never looked a bride more unhappy. Her dark eyes were narrowed and her dishevelled hair only partly hid the bruises that were taking shape on her forehead and cheek.

They nailed posters to trees and others they strung to fences with wire. Even before the men rode away the posters turned crisp with the unseasonable heat and seemed to fade before their eyes, but they did not fade so much that the reward was no longer visible. Anyone could make out that the capture of this woman with dark eyes and long dark hair was worth one thousand pounds to someone. There was no fine print regarding who had offered the reward or who would ever pay it, but many of those who saw it had a mind for pictures and numbers only. The money itself was enough to impress itself upon them and in a day or two the news had spread to the single cabins where all the men who were otherwise tapping mugs on their tables, or skinning some bony thing for their dinner, took the news as they would take a gold nugget between their teeth and they felt it like a tweaked nerve changing their fortunes forever.

In their minds there was no shadow of a doubt that Jessie was the thief and a murderer too. Even though some of them knew Fitz first-hand to be a drunk and, worse, a boastful drunk, bragging about the ways he might kill her. But who were they to judge? If they held to an eye for an eye as their order of justice, most of them would all be blind anyway. The thought of weighing up a man's sins against the way he should die unnerved them and their sympathy swung to Fitz and was ignited more by the thought of him dying by the hand of a woman. And, further, they considered the size of Fitz and the force of him and what they knew of her and they concluded her powers must be unnatural. His house was burnt down and his body was not found and they preferred to think of witchcraft than the idea that there was some accomplice among them. Those who had a head for it deduced that all in his employ were sent up north to deliver cattle so that only left her and her carefully chosen moment.

There was talk that cattle were disappearing without a trace and the old man too gave fuel to the story. He reported that since Jessie had passed through his house in her escape to the mountains, the old woman, his wife, was no longer sane and had begun muttering prayers when she thought that he could not hear her. She had never prayed aloud, not in all the years he had known her, only to herself. And so, in no time at all, the posters and the talk together inspired a terrible scourge and they believed that they were armed with enough reasons for capturing and killing my mother.

Most of them rode in packs, partly because they did not know the terrain of the mountains, but more out of superstition. Some of them had lived in the shadow of the mountains for more years than they had fingers, but still they sat unnamed and until now they had no reason to go near them. Only for the fact of the prize money did some ride entirely alone. But they were few, having no assurance that if they fell or lost their footing they would ever be found.

The old woman heard them in the night, a cacophony of horses and men. Metal and leather slapping against horses'bellies, tins and pots and guns, men reckless and howling.

She rose from the bed she shared with the old man and took pains to be quiet, though now it seemed that nothing would wake him. She shuffled out, collecting her shawl and her boots, and moved into the dark to where his dog was tied to a tree. The dog's eyes glistened in the dark, moving like two flames in its head. As she came up beside it and cooed so it would not bark but then it did. She used the words the old man used,
Shush, you mongrel bastard
, and then she muzzled it as she had seen the old man do, wrapping rope around its snout. The muzzling sent it bracing against the tree in a soundless fit, its eyes protruding for all it could not bark.

The old woman walked towards the fence until she could see the men riding in the distance. Some of them carried lanterns and from afar and part-illuminated they appeared wrongly composed, the neck of a horse joined with the face of a man, long arms holding lanterns. The old woman could not determine how many they numbered but from the racket she thought them to be a small army.