Carpentaria (22 page)

He re-entered the sightless world under the mud, knowing that somehow, if he could avoid being shot at, he would have to get out of the water. The machine hovered close above him. His mind running, calculating distances, his own down in the mud and theirs above, and breathless, knowing he must have taken them by surprise, if it was him they were after. If he could get out he would have to run, but where to, he was not sure. All he had to gamble on was the helicopter not having enough space to land, convincing himself that this was so, otherwise why did it not come down?

Not sure if the man was firing his rifle into the water, Will moved away from Elias’s boat, hoping it would be difficult for them to see him. He crawled along the mud floor, camouflaged by the turbulence in the choppy waters covering the surface. Which way? The image of the log where the bird had sat sprung into his mind. He was almost breathless as he made his way towards it, hoping, convincing himself that it was the only cover, his only chance, to escape. He moved, quickly estimating he had correctly pinpointed the log from under the water, hoping that they thought he would stay near the boat.

He calculated right, the right length of time he could stay submerged, long enough to bump into the end of the log. He resurfaced behind it. Safe for the moment, he looked back towards Elias, only to see the boat sinking lopsidedly in the turbulence. They had fired at the boat thinking Will would stay under it. Now, the helicopter was taking up position again directly above him, then it flung itself back across the far side of the lagoon.

He knew it was time to get out of the water – if they had not already seen him, they soon would. He ran hard towards the spearwood with the deafening noise of the machine closing in behind him. He could not hear the rifle being fired. Random shots into the gravel ricocheted beside him, from left to right. Shots hit the ground in front of where he ran, behind, and right to left again. Will thought he was being pursued by a psychopath with high-powered sights, or else someone was trying to scare him off. He ran as a wild zigzagging animal in full alert to danger, knowing it was being hunted down, became like rubber, flexible, bouncing, too hard to catch. The helicopter, accelerating to get up ahead of him, turned for the gunman to get a crack at him, face on. It was too late. He was running with a power he did not realise existed in himself, and he was approaching the cover of rocks in the gullies. But what neither party realised was, they had run out of time. The storm hit. Wind and rain fell in horizontal sheets across the valley, and the helicopter made a hasty retreat to the west, in the direction of the mine.

Will knew that he now had the night before they could try again, but if the rain kept up, it would not take long for the roads to become impassable for days. He sat on the rocks and became just another dark shadow in the premature darkness of the rain, except when every minute or so lightning struck, and he was able clearly to see the surrounding landscape, and he and the lagoon in white light. In his mind he began surveying the open space that separated him from the town. Where would he find the best cover if the mine sent out more helicopters to find him? Perhaps it was just a coincidence? He decided to be on the safe side he would assume the company had a memory as big as his of their battles fought over mining in the Gulf. He would have to stay out of sight of search parties as much as possible, if the helicopter was likely to return in the morning, and then he thought about how careful he would need to be in Desperance, after this.

The rain fell in torrents and he knew even before he caught his breath, he would have to go back down to the lagoon for Elias’s body before the psychopaths from the mine had another chance to tamper with his body. Mozzie had told him about the poison festering in the souls of the men who disturbed the earth. ‘The spirits went Blah! They just spat on the ground like a piece of rotten meat. They were listening to the truth, and they knew, and they looked to you, Will. You keep doing what you got to do.’ Will felt Mozzie Fishman’s presence, standing behind him, grinning and pointing between flashes of lightning to where the spirits flew around in the wet skies, speaking quietly about the mining men, saying how he believed their work was just beginning by using Elias as their vessel. Will could never escape the words he heard in his heartbeat. But, if the rain kept up, the creeks would flood through the lagoon in the night, and who knew where the body would end up, if he did not take it out now?

He went back into the lagoon, anxious to save Elias before the water rose, and his own spirit shadow, one old ancestor, limped along to keep up with him. When he finally touched the boat in the dark, he found it was not entirely submerged and he was able to straighten it enough for towing out of the water. In the hours that followed getting Elias out of the lagoon, Will took the tin boat and hid it behind a spearwood thicket leaning against a rise, about a kilometre away in higher country above the flood levels. Carefully he concealed the vessel with spinifex and dead branches, until he was satisfied that he had created a hide as though nature’s hand had constructed it. Then he went back for Elias to take him up further into the high country. He was not difficult to carry. ‘We will get you somewhere safe, up in the hills,’ Will kept on talking, speaking to and replying for Elias as though he were alive. ‘How could you be dead Elias?’ ‘Well! I can’t tell you because…because…because I don’t know what happened to me.’ It was comforting to hear the sound of his own voice, to feel he carried a real man, not to think of the dried-out remains of the person who had helped to condition his life. He felt each step of wet, loose rock with his bare feet, as they climbed the rugged terrain as swiftly and with the sensitivity of mountain goats in total darkness, higher on the hill.

Satisfied he had them both secure in the hills, and sheltering from the rain under a rocky ledge he had located by sniffing where the kangaroos sheltered, he looked down in the distance and saw headlights below. He observed the lights of two cars coming in a hurry through the rain in the direction of the lagoon. He could see how the car lights weaved about in the darkness, that the drivers were finding it difficult to keep the cars on the road at the speed they were travelling.

‘Elias, I don’t know what is going on here but someone seems to be in a big hurry coming along that road,’ Will spoke propped up against the rock wall, sitting beside him. ‘Yes, if they are not careful they will be dead too,’ Elias replied. The vehicles continued to swerve back and forth across the road.

Will slipped back down the hill, without ruffling a stone, to get a closer view of what was going on. The two vehicles stopped at the turn-off, and he listened to the voices discussing whether to take the vehicles down the steep dirt track, which was slippery now from the rain.

Headlights and searchlights on top of the vehicles beamed down the track through the rain. Water raced down the road like a river and Will watched the navy uniforms of six men, including his two older brothers – Donny and Inso, who worked for the mine
.
It was a wonder they did not hear his thoughts. Perhaps his thoughts were blocked, concealed behind the rocks on the other side of the main road. He watched the big dark frames of Donny and Inso, sliding down the watery road to the lagoon in the black wet, with their torches jumping ahead of them. Two others followed them.

‘What we supposed to be looking for anyway?’ one brother spoke. All four were talking, and someone said he’d been told there was a body down there.

‘We have to look out for a little tinnie boat.’

‘What’s that smell anyway?’ Donny asked Inso, who said he did not know. ‘It smells like an animal, probably kangaroo fur.’

‘Fish! You idiot, it smells like fish.’

‘What fish? Animal fur when it’s wet.’

Will followed, moving through the spearwood on the side of the road. In previous times he would have sprung out in front of them to pick a fight, their fighting marathons, fought until one remained standing. Donny and Inso kept talking to the other two men about the rotting fish smell.

‘Can’t you smell it?’

‘Yeaaa, I suppose so.’

Will heard his thoughts leaping out of his mind so loudly, he believed they were hanging around in the heavy humid air, like illuminated balloons. Donny and Inso, or the other two men, jumpy with the torch, often swung the light around to shine straight through the spearwood trees, as if they were trying to locate where the stench of old fish was coming from. ‘There can’t be any fish here.’ It was too dry for fish, they said, laughing at the repetitious topic of their conversation, and the absurdity of the lingering smell, until finally, because they were in good spirits, they agreed that the overpowering stench was the work of indigestion –
food poisoning
. A fish percolating in their own intestines.

Will moved in closer, moving next to them through the spearwood. Silently his feet joined the paws of the wallaby and kangaroo, feeling the ground in the darkness, belonging as if to nothing of life. So, close, he listened to their heartbeat, so nearby, almost standing as his brothers’ shadow. He penetrated their laboured breathing inside their lungs, and could see when they waved the torches across the flooding lagoon. Yellow beams cutting across the bucketing rain, sheeting across the rippling water with the wind. He saw the shock on their faces when they could not see the boat. Oh! Glory be. He could almost hear his brothers pray. They argued with the other two workmates, about whether it had sunk and whether one of them should go out into the lagoon and check. Just to make sure.

Curiosity killed the cat. Will knew Donny and Inso’s motto in life. Not one of the four men volunteered. No one wanted to go into the muddy water that was already rising with the rainwater racing down the steep surroundings of the lagoon, running black liquid over their boots. They heard all the dead things thundering down the hills from miles around with the leaves, sliding snakes, awakened crocodiles, rushing into the lagoon. It seemed as though all the wind and rain on earth was funnelling inwards with the spearwood trees bent, pointing straight down to this little lagoon. Will knew that even Donny and Inso saw the spearwood trees become the spirits blowing spears which whistled past them into the water.

The technical bosses, talking back up on the main road, were minding the vehicles. ‘Who was to know,’ the four men agreed, ‘that we did not go in, looking for the tinnie they up there are after?’ Will was relieved that the other two men followed Donny and Inso, and his brothers were true to form: the story of their life, always willing to shirk duty. No one was arguing; there was total agreement. The four headed back up the road.

While they walked up the hill through the running water and rain, occasionally they would shine their torches through the bush, perfunctorily, perhaps thinking of having heard a sound of an animal. Many times the beams cut straight across Will, but he was a mud man not seen by others. They tell the others, the two supervisors, waiting with the vehicle, that the lagoon is starting to flood and the boat must have sunk. Their voices, practised, have a genuine ring of truth. ‘That will do anyhow,’ the technical men say dismissively, with authority.

The technicians continued speaking, discussing the possibilities of losing the evidence in the floodwaters. In voices that speak quietly and without emotion, they discuss the forecast, the rainfall patterns, the jet stream, flood rates, all with a blank look on their wet faces, dismissing the ‘local knowledge’ given by the other four, whenever they spoke. The technicians talked about concrete evidence – not the dead body nor the one they had earlier tried to shoot. The conversation becomes too detailed and monotonous for the likes of Inso and Donny. The mine in their mind meant good food, as much as the money, and they did not want to miss out on dinner, not for one day, not for anyone’s business. While the technicians stand in the rain, Inso and Donny and the two others sit in their vehicles, brand-new four-wheel drive troop carriers, navy blue under the mud, talking of stews and casseroles, excellent fish curry. Good food cooked properly by chefs, not just chucked around in a frypan in a pile of fat until it burned, and nobody to fight you for it. They smile and wait – nobody ever had it this good.

They wanted to say if given half a chance about what was right –
In the nocturnal world you leave the dead alone
. It was not dead people who feed you. Inso and Donny lounge back in the company’s vehicle. They are comfortable, just like they are in their own cars. They are thinking big, because they can, earning good money down in the mine. They make veiled threats of leaving the mine for good, waiting for nothing, keeping an eye on the time, watching the technicians point up the road in the headlights, and thinking sourly –
they can stick their flippen jobs
.

The four working men tap the car dash, the gear knob, the steering wheel, waiting, thinking about what the kitchen staff will leave in the oven, thinking about manoeuvring the vehicles back over the sodden roads. They light up and wait in a cigarette smoke haze, listening to the commentary on powerful car radios, mostly they say nothing to each other, except to comment in expletives about the uselessness of the local football commentary on the local radio station. Listening to their favourite team making the same mistakes over and over, when,
even a girl would know better
. That useless referee again,
Didn’t anyone know people listen to the cunt of a radio and even depended on the friggen thing once in a while to get the proper information?

The technical men in navy raincoats and yellow helmets still spend time hovering over the front of their vehicle. They seem to relish rain dripping down their nose, spilling off their faces and hands. Will, standing behind their vehicle, hears of their lengthy experiences in the tropics as seasoned troopers of many Wet seasons, recalling all they remembered about floods in those parts.

The smell of rotting fish hung glued to the air, as though it had came from the rain and dirt mixing together, but they did not notice
.
‘What about this lagoon?’ They speak about the speed of flowing waters in the height of the floods, travelling floodwaters, racing at the speed of 200 kilometres an hour, and pausing at the fantastic knowledge of this idea, they come to the realisation that if there was a remote possibility of recovery of the body along the river in the Dry season, it would simply be noted as a flood victim. Another poor soul lost to the river.
What else?
If by some sheer fluke, his body washed away to sea and was discovered, it would be like he never left the sea in the first place. There was nothing to connect him to the mine or the lagoon except, except what? They said it was a dumb, stupid idea to put the body there in the first place. ‘We had to flush him out somehow from amongst those religious freaks.’ But Will Phantom had got away. It was an accident – the storm came. ‘Well! A right cock-up. But we’ll get the bugger; it won’t take long.’