Dirt Music (26 page)

He brushes dirt from his swag and looks at how it powders the floor like seasoning. He stoops and corrals the dust with the envelope. Takes a peck in his fingers.

Out on the muddy street he calls from a phone booth. He lets it ring in White Point until someone picks up. A small, hoarse voice.

Georgie?

But the voice is a child’s. He hangs up.

In the morning he hitches a ride north on Highway 1 with a mob of blackfellas in a five-tonne truck. Fifteen people sprawl around inside the steel cage amidst bedrolls and cardboard boxes full of supplies. No one says much. The slipstream and the road noise make conversation difficult. A couple of kids give him shy, curious looks. A toothless old fella offers him a swig from a warm bottle of Fanta. He declines.

They cross the swollen Fitzroy River at Willare Bridge. You can hear it over the sound of the truck. Trees and dead cattle loll in the churning pink current. The river is all over the floodplain .297 Out on some intersecting dirt road a semi stands bogged to the axles, its driver out on the bullbar rolling himself a smoke.

The land glistens yellow, orange, red. White cockatoos rise into the charcoal sky. Thin trees. Mud. Cattle grids.

As they close on the town of Derby boab trees appear more frequently beside the road. Their smooth flanks shine after the rain. They stand fat and close, and to Fox they’re preposterous and lovely, like a crowd lining the highway, hip to hip, all arse and head-dress in the sun.

The old bloke with the Fanta leans in to Fox’s ear. Dis fulla, he says, pointing out a huge knobbly boab with boughs like obese arms. Same as my missus.

A ripple of laughter goes around the truck as though the joke’s been told before. Up against the cab a woman wags a finger.

At the airstrip Fox finds an open hangar where a boy is shoving a two-seater into position. When he asks about a charter he’s directed to the office. Chugger will fix him up. Chugger appears at the doorway, a silver-haired bloke in pressed shorts, a shirt with badge and epaulettes, and rubber thongs. He sucks his teeth when Fox asks about Coronation Gulf. They go in to look at the chart. The pilot points out the closest strip. It’s high on the plateau inland. It’s either that or a chopper and with half the inland cattle stations underwater there’s not a machine to spare.

Besides, says Chugger, he’s not a chopper pilot.

How much? asks Fox. To the plateau.

A thousand bucks.

Fox peels off the notes.

Geez, yer keen, mate. Don’t have to pay today, yer know.

I want to go today, says Fox.

Comin back when?

One way.

You’re the boss, says the pilot, amused. Course there’s paperwork.

Fox counts off another hundred dollars.

Squeaky! the pilot calls. Fuel her up!

I need some stuff in town.

Allow me. I’ll shout you lunch.

Fox buys dried food, a waterbag, insect repellent, candles, sunscreen, lighters, mosquito coils, some first aid supplies to supplement his little box, a light machete, some thirty-kilo handlines, hooks, lures and a polytarp rolled tight as a newspaper. Then he chooses a telescopic fishing rod and a lightweight reel to match it. They look flimsy but everything else he sees is either too bulky or too heavy to carry all day.

You in trouble, son? Chugger says over lunch.

Only if you can’t fly a plane.

Outside men and women push shopping trolleys stacked with beer.

They’re laughing and yelling. Some are swathed in bandages.

Pension day, says Chugger. They’ll be tearin each other’s throats out by dark.

Fox saws at the last of his roast lamb and works mechanically at the chips and gravy. He feels himself gorging. The bar smells of smoke and frying oil and underarms.

You got someone waitin for you out there, sport?

No.

Got an HF radio?

Fox shakes his head.

Well, says Chugger. Eat up.

They bank out across mangroves and mudflats. The great delta is webbed with rivulets and tide wrinkles and where the Fitzroy spills into King Sound the water is the colour of milk chocolate.

Beneath the overcast they bear northeast into the interior and Fox sees how old and beaten-down the land is with its crone-skin patterns, its wens and scars and open wounds. The plains, with their sparse, grey tufts of mulga scrub, rise into the high skeletal disarray of the sandstone ranges where rivers run like green gashes toward the sea. All rigid geometry falls away; no roads, no fences, just a confusion of colour. Out at the horizon the jagged, island-choked coast.

Get a better view, says Chugger through the intercom, if Squeaky cleaned the bloody windows. Coon grease.

Sorry? Fox says, holding the headphone tight to his ears.

The indigenous flier sweats it out like mutton fat, says the pilot. Have to scrub it off the perspex. Abos are the bulk of our trade. We bus em in and out from their settlements. They love to fly on the taxpayer’s shilling. Orright for some, eh?

They climb above the thunderclouds into bright sun. After two hours they buffet their way down again and Fox sees the green swathe of the plateau above the long gulf. The airstrip is a pink cross. Chugger dives and cranks the machine over onto one wing to check the state of the surface. It looks wet at the edges.

We’ll suck and see, says the pilot as they straighten out across the treetops and make a turn downwind for the approach.

So green, he thinks.

After they land it only takes a few moments to unload Fox’s modest pile of gear.

Hope you brought yer umbrella, says Chugger. This plateau’s the wettest spot in the state. Fifteen hundred mil a year—that’s more’n sixty inches.

Fox sets his things out, considers repacking for the sake of 300 neatness and better distribution of weight. Already his shirt is soaked through with sweat.

Spose I’ll be comin back out for ya, says Chugger. One way or the other. Don’t think I haven’t seen a few of youse characters.

There’s always a search in the end. Doesn’t matter who you are: boffin, fugitive, survivalist space cadet, God-botherer. It’s all the same deal in the end. You want me to give anyone a message?

Fox shakes his head.

Didn’t even get the name.

Buckridge.

Even that name won’t get you out of the shit up here, sport. This is the dark bit at the back of the cupboard. You’re on your own.

Yes, says Fox almost believing it.

He doesn’t watch the plane taxi or take off. He kneels on the dirt and repacks his kit. His hands are shaking. He finds his hat and polaroids and carries everything toward the wall of trees. In the shade of a woollybutt he spreads the map. Already it’s lost its crispness in the humidity, and the compass adheres to it.

On the chart there is a track from the airstrip down off the plateau to the sea. The contours are daunting.

He figures he has an hour or two of hiking time before he loses light. He takes a bearing and loads up.

Within five minutes he’s half blind with sweat and the vehicle track he’s following disappears beneath head-high canegrass. He’s forced to gauge direction by feeling for the ruts with his boots and as he plunges through the vegetation, grasshoppers, butterflies and beetles blunder into him, 301 snagging in his teeth and hair, filling his shirt, coating his pack and swag. Rising from the grass either side, livistona palms, cabbage gums and bloodwoods seem to spit birds as he approaches. The sky is creased with thunderheads.

In an hour or so he’s nearly buggered. His skin feels flayed by speargrass. Ahead a sandstone spur promises the first change of elevation. The map had shown scores of ridges unfolding seaward.

This rock might offer him a view. It’s claustrophobic in all this jungly undergrowth. He gazes at the spur and bears toward it. And then a man appears on it. Fox keeps walking. The man is still there when he arrives.

Thought I heard a plane.

Me, says Fox panting. He looks up at the bloke. He’s dark-skinned and barefoot. His shoulder-length hair is black with veins of grey in it. Army surplus shorts hang off his hips beneath a shiny hairless paunch.

Lost, eh?

No, says Fox wiping his face with his hat.

Sure?

Fox shrugs.

Science fulla, are ya?

No.

Guvmint?

No.

Adviser.

No.

Lawyer fulla.

Fox smiles and shakes his head.

Mine boy.

Not me.

Not a station boy, then.

Fox unslings a waterbottle. No.

Well ya not a blackfulla, he says with a wheezy chuckle. Thas for sure!

There’s an oriental cast to this man’s features but his accent is Aboriginal.

How long’s it take to get down to the coast from here? Fox asks before drinking. He offers the canteen to the man who appears not to notice.

Good whole day if ya go the short way. You outta daylight, but.

Better camp with us. Best spot.

Don’t wanna be any trouble.

Look like you in trouble.

No.

Menzies, the man says, sticking out a hand whose palm is yellow.

Fox. Lu Fox.

Carn then.

Menzies looks at his load and seems to contemplate an offer of help but then he just turns and leads the way. Fox hesitates, but follows. The weight of all the gear on his back presses into his heels and it gets worse as they work their way down the ridge and stoop to pass beneath the boughs of trees.

Roots. Musty litter. Clay the colour of curdled milk. At the ragged edge of a red stone breakaway they climb down, holding vines and fig roots for support. They come to a clearing surrounded by cherty stone terraces, a small pan of dirt where a bough shelter stands surmounted by tarps like verandahs. Fox and Menzies approach the smoking campfire. A young, thin black man emerges from the overhang of the surrounding terrace. He wears a pair of blue football shorts and nothing else.

This me mate Axle, says Menzies. Shy fulla. He’s a good boy.

G’day, says Fox writhing out of his load.

This fulla Lu Fox, says Menzies.

Flyin fox.

Don’t be humbuggin im, Axle.

Dji//n bunambun.

Yeah, yeah. You see him. See him good. Get that billy on.

You got beer? Axle asks.

Sorry, says Fox. Some tea, coffee.

Tea we got, says Menzies. And you doan need any Emu bloody Export beer.

Axle’s eyes dart in his partly averted face. He seems to be suppressing a smile. Menzies hauls Fox’s gear in under the shelter while the boy fills a billy from a plastic jerrycan.

This is a good spot, says Fox.

The boy nods. His hair is matted. His knees are worn the colour of sandstone and his feet are wide and callused.

How long you blokes been here?

All time, says Axle. Everywhen.

Couple seasons, says Menzies crouching to stir up the fire. Come and go, you know.

Is this—?

Our country? Menzies shrugs dramatically. Dunno. Orphan, I was.

Well, thas what the nuns said. Ever bin down New Norcia way?

Fox can’t help but smile as he nods.

All them kids. Noongars, Wongai people. But you look at me. Half-Chinese fulla. Think my mother from Bardi people maybe. Who knows. Them nuns and priest fullas didn’t hardly talk no English.

Didn’t tell me nothin! he utters looking more bemused than bitter.

Dis my country, says Axle.

Mebbe, says Menzies with a diplomatic shrug.

Too right.

Could be. Could be. You get that meat, boy.

Axle springs up and heads down a gully in the waning light. Fox studies Menzies wondering what it is that seems odd. And then he sees it—the man has no navel.

Interestin, innit.

Well.

Mebbe the skin growed over. Somethin. Them nuns didn’t like it, thas for sure. Kept me shirt on all summer. And them kids? he says with a hoarse, joyous laugh. Nobody fight with a yellafulla with no bellybutton. Axle, too. He come follern me like a puppydog when he saw it. Talkin rubbish.

Axel. That’s a German name. He off a mission? Lutherans maybe?

Menzies squints. Spell it

A-X-L-E way. Real particular about that. Only fuckin word he can write, poor fulla. Bit lost, ya know. Bit strange. Cut himself up to be like me. Nearly cut himself three bellybuttons! Found him up Kalumburu way. I was workin for cattle mob. He just walked in the outcamp from the bush—all wild and sick—talkin about bein in the islands and flyin up the coast lookin for the old ones, the old people. Proper heartbroken he was. Thinks they’s old shy people still out there. In the old way, you know? Livin proper, hidin out still from the whitefullas. Reckon they’s all waitin for im, poor mad bugger. Aw, Lu, he upset everybody. All this crazy talkin and gettin angry. Thought he’s a petrol-sniffer.

They didn’t want no trouble, no church fullas or guvmint. So I took him orf. Out Karunjie way, Halls Creek. But he’s a handful.

All this language he talks, you know, little bit Wunumbal, little bit Ngarinyin, he learned it off some whitefulla. Makes it up.

But he’s not a proper Aborigine man.

Proper? says Fox.

Never bin through the Law, see.

Initiated.

Thassit. No people. No Country.

And you?

Me? I belong to Jesus Christ. Like it or not. They wet you and get you. Anyway. No other bastard will have me.

Axle appears from the deepening gloom of dusk with a lump of bloody meat slung across his shoulder like a saddle. Fox drinks his mouth-puckering black tea while the two of them build up the fire and cut the meat into marbled slabs which they then roast on the coals.

They eat back from the fire where it’s cooler and in the dark the flames are the only light.

Beef, says Fox.

Fresh killed this morning.

Pow, says Axle miming a rifle shot.

Fox considers the irony of having fallen among fellow poachers.

Menzies explains how they live on bush tucker when there’s no cattle handy, how Axle prides himself on his ability to hunt goannas and birds, to shoot the occasional crocodile and ferret out treats like sugarbag from the hives of the native bee. He knows the berries, has an instinct for it, though Menzies prefers beef and damper and tea, which is why they camp on the edge of the plateau. There’s water nearby and the occasional four-wheel adventurer who needs rescuing from himself in exchange for precious supplies. Fox asks if they get lonely, and Menzies laughs. Axle, he says, doesn’t care for girls but they both wish for some dogs to cuddle up to at night. Menzies confesses to being married once. He names all the prisons he’s been in. He’s more travelled than Fox by a good measure.