Dirt Music (27 page)

The older man gets to his feet and goes rooting around 306 inside the shelter until a light grows and brightens and Fox smells kerosene. Coming out he stumbles on something that rings discordantly and he curses, almost dropping the lamp.

Special occasions, he announces setting the lamp on the dirt beside them.

What’d you kick in there?

Fuckin gittar thing.

Mine, says Axle.

He likes a strum, says Menzies. But he gets disappointed. Can’t make a tune, not proper. Kills him. Awful.

I could tune it for you, says Fox. If it’d help.

Axle bounds to the shelter and brings out a cheap Korean thing grown smelly with mildew but still gaudy in its sunburst lacquer.

He presents it two-handed to Fox who stands it on his boot and twirls it by the neck. He clamps it to his sweaty shirt and tunes it quickly. The strings are furry with corrosion. His fingertips feel virginal.

Play, says Axle.

Ah.

Axle and Menzies look at him expectantly, so open-faced and hopeful.

What music d’you like? he asks.

Slim Dusty, the boy announces.

Fox plays “Pub with No Beer” and the others sing along with what sounds to him like apocryphal lyrics. It doesn’t matter a damn to him; he hates the song. But the two of them croon on their haunches, eyes closed soulfully while lightning flickers in the sky. When they’re done there’s a huge sigh from Axle.

Nobody speaks. Fox tunes again for a moment before breaking into a mournful Irish air just to fill the silence, to mask his own discomfort. It starts out no more than a bit of noodling but the melody gets hold of him. He settles into the 307 chord progression and feels himself begin to relax at the feel of the frets underhand, the way the tune offers itself up for elaboration at every turn, and when he completes the cycle he can’t leave off, he has to go again, this time with confidence, with a little more tapestry. The air plays itself out but still he can’t let go. He segues into a blues rag in the same key, just for a change of pace. Gets a little shuffle going despite himself, something that warms and loosens his tendons. The strings are like fencewire. Still, he bends and slurs. His wrist feels gritty with disuse but he manages a slim vibrato all the same. The guitar’s tinny, toy-like tone rings in his chest.

Music. And it’s not hurting anybody.

He stops when the boy gets up and walks into the bough hut.

He okay?

Can’t play. Little bit shame, see.

Oh. I didn’t mean to—

Likes a strum, but. You teach him.

But I’ll be gone in the morning, says Fox.

Pity, that.

Fox has an idea and de-tunes the instrument to open &+D. Tries it in the minor first but senses it’ll be too mournful. He brings it to the major key and strums it one-handed.

Axle?

Won’ come out now, Lu.

Axle. I’ve fixed it so you can play this chord, see?

He lets it ring. Look! One hand. Put a finger here and… listen. That’s &+G. Easy. Up and down. Even with a bottle you’ll do it. Axle?

The boy doesn’t come out. Fox shrugs and puts the guitar down. It rings in D-major and Menzies smiles conspiratorially.

This land, murmurs Fox. Is this station property?

National park.

Ah.

And blackfulla land too. But all boxite, you know. Makes aluminiun?

Bauxite?

Everybody fightin now. Blackfullas, too. This mob, that mob.

Lawyers. Awful.

What d’you think’ll happen?

Menzies shrugs. Someone gonna kick us off sooner later. Boxite man, guvmint man, cattle man, Aborigine man. Too right.

I can’t see it.

Too right. Blackfulla in a suit. Papers in his hands. Could be.

A distant toll of thunder rolls across the treetops.

You lost, Lu?

Not yet.

Where you goin to?

Somewhere quiet.

Menzies shakes his head, doubtful. A light rain begins to fall.

They go to bed. Fox unrolls his swag beneath the outlying tarp and listens to the fitful patter.

In the night he wakes to find Axle hunkered beside him.

You banman? the young man whispers, staring fearfully.

Bad man? No. I’m just… just a bloke, Axle.

You take my wundala. For the music. Orright?

Um?

You paddle out there, out Widjalgur, past there. Find that mob.

Okay.

You fly. Like me, unna. In my dream I go. Fly out there on the sea. To Durugu.

Durugu?

Them islands. Long way. Where djua//ri go. All time. Gone people, djua//ri, spirit people.

Fox tries to understand him.

Axle, murmurs the boy patting his bare chest. Wheel turns on me.

Long after the boy has gone back to bed Fox lies there thinking of Axle’s hot conviction that he means something, that he’s central to something even if Fox or the kid himself don’t understand what it might be. Even as a delusion it’s attractive.

He envies him. You can’t help it when all you can feel is the wheel rolling over you time and again. It’s why you get away, get out from under it for good.

You got one idea where you goin? asks Menzies in the morning as Fox prepares to pull his pack on.

Axle has disappeared; his blackened hunk of damper sits on the billy lid.

Fox unfolds the map to show Menzies the archipelago out along the gulf. He wants to work his way around the coast until he’s close to the biggest island which is separated from the mainland by a narrow strait. He hasn’t figured out how to cross it yet. He has the machete so maybe he could make a raft.

The older man purses his lips. //Hm. Axle must have knowed already. True! Says he give you the boat. He’s readin your mind, Lu.

He really has a boat?

Or you be walkin a long time. And then what? Swim? You take his boat. A present for the music, see. Here on the black beach. Wait for high stop tide. Paddle cross. You be right.

Proper boat, Lu. Good one. But listen here. See this country? he says pointing out the western shore of the gulf. Doan go here, orright?

What’s there?

Business places. Hidin from you. Not for you.

Secret, you mean? asks Fox. Sacred?

Menzies looks away.

What about you? Fox asks. You and Axle. You go there?

Menzies shakes his head. We’s wundjat fullas. Lost people. We doan go there. From respec. You unnerstan respec?

I understand. I won’t go there. But here, says Fox pointing to the island on the map, this okay for me to stay?

You can visit, says Menzies. That boat. You lucky fulla.

Yes.

Sometimes I think Axle’s not so crazy. Like he dreamed you before, mebbe. Before the boat, you know, he did a dream and he tole me all about it. Little blue boat comin in from the sea. We go down to that black beach and bugger me! he says with a laugh.

Washed up in the rocks. One canoe boat. Paddle an everythin! Ha!

Fox smiles and turns bodily to orient himself by the chart. He hears the jangle of the guitar as Axle comes smiling into the clearing. The smile drops. The instrument clangs to the ground as the boy comes running. He snatches the map and throws it onto the embers of the cookfire. Fox cries out in surprise. The paper ignites with a gentle whump and Axle is back in his face demanding the other maps, anything he has. Fox appeals to Menzies who advises him to give them up. The kid is trembling with fury.

His eyes are startling, their yellowy whites right under his own.

There’s nothing Fox can do but pull the maps out and watch them burn.

Fuckin bastards, mutters the boy standing over the flames.

Shit, says Fox. That’s torn it.

Got a thing about em, says Menzies. Just trouble, maps. You can’t really blame him. Like they suck everythin up. Can’t blame a blackfulla not likin a map, Lu.

Go on the country, says the boy almost pacified now. Not on the map.

And what the fuck does that mean?

Menzies shrugs. Then he smiles. Means, be careful you don’t get lost.

All day, he works his way down waterlogged ridges to the sea, stunned by the loss of his maps. Maybe it’s for the best, he thinks in the end. Another burnt bridge. Forces you forward.

Not an hour into his trek he hears a crack and discovers that he’s snapped the end off his fishing rod. The thing is buggered now. It does little for his mood.

From a long saddle of stone he sees the gulf light up in a sudden grilling moment of sunlight, and in the distance, rising from the milky turquoise water, the islands. There’s nothing behind him, nothing left now; it’s all ahead.

Just on sunset he stumbles down to a tiny beach of black stones.

He searches the rocks and thickets for a boat. Insects swarm at his ankles and he begins to wonder if perhaps he’s been sucked in by some joke between Axle and Menzies. But in the last light, beneath a mat of vines, he finds a battered sea kayak covered in logos and stickers from some geographic expedition. It’s a stubby polythene thing but sturdy enough. The paddle is tethered to the hull and in the compartments he finds fishing tackle, a grapple and a coil of old nylon rope.

He lies awake all night beside a fitful fire, persecuted by sandflies and the spectres of crocodiles. Before dawn he rises to eat and prepare for the long paddle. In the first light he tests the kayak for leaks. It sweats a little but seems fine. He watches as the tide rises, bringing with it the flotsam of mangrove leaves, sticks and mud bubbles like foamed chocolate.

When he senses the tide peaking he drags the packed kayak to the water and sets out. The sky is clear. The sun glazes everything.

With the weight of all his gear in it the kayak feels precarious.

It takes him a while to get used to it and to find a paddling rhythm. He knows the gentlest nudge of a passing croc will put him over. The water is like shot silk and he barely raises a crease. It’s so hot out there, so still and clear that the distances seem to expand until everything looks twice as far as it did on the map. He paddles with the great plateau in the air behind him. Works his way out along endless walls of mangroves.

Across a rivermouth a mile wide. Toward the intermittent white flare of beaches on the farther shore.

At the corner of his vision, a flash. He swivels to see a mackerel fall from the sky and hit the water with a resounding smack.

Just as the tide turns he reaches the other side but the coast here is rocky. So he works his way along in search of a place to land. He begins to sense the tide sweeping him parallel. The kayak is sluggish. His anxiety rises. Where are the beaches?

By the time he comes to a white shell cove between sheltering headlands he’s all but had it. He angles in through the current with the last of his strength, staggers out into the blood-hot shallows and drags the kayak up the beach.

First up he spreads his swag on the white shellgrit to dry in the sun. Then he goes in search of somewhere to camp. Within moments he stumbles on six red fuel drums hidden in a clump of spinifex. Forty-fours, all of them full. Immediately his excitement evaporates.

At the end of the cove he comes to a sandstone overhang whose shade is enhanced by a bough shelter of loosely thatched spinifex and within its shade he discovers a cache of weatherproof crates, two generators, a freezer wrapped in plastic, stackable chairs, PVC piping and a ten-horsepower outboard. Further back the cave has a maze of chambers like outspread fingers. In the darkness he hears water dripping onto water.

He fetches a candle from his kit and finds rock niches full of sportfishing tackle and canned food.

Even here, he thinks.

In the mouth of the cave he makes camp for the night.

He wakes with hermit crabs all over him and utters a silly yell.

The sudden movement turns them into pebbles as they lie doggo. He laughs. His own voice sounds close beneath the stone roof. Down at the water’s edge he splashes himself cautiously. He makes tea, eats his last muesli bar and goes foraging in the cache to satisfy his curiosity.

Sealed in PVC sewer pipe he finds graphite casting rods. Their reels are in a battered Igloo cooler, some still in their boxes and never used and others wrapped in old mosquito nets and bits of calico. There are tin trunks full of lures—jigs, spoons, plugs, divers. He sees spools of nylon monofilament leader material and high-tech gelspun fishing line. Some kind of professional setup for the Dry season. All the more reason to go further, deeper up the gulf.

Fox packs his kit piece by piece into the kayak and straps the bulky swag across the top. From the cold pool in the darkness at the back of the cave he fills his canteen and waterbag, and, passing the stockpile of angling equipment on his way out, he hesitates. Unless he can fix it, and he hasn’t yet thought how, his own rod is all but useless. He knows he can fish with handlines, that blackfellas favour them, but the casting power of a rod will make all the difference out here.

What else will you live on but fish? A good rod could save your life. He picks out a Penn rod and an Abu baitcasting reel. He fills a calico bag with lures and line and hooks, and jams it all into the kayak. Before he pushes off he goes back for the mosquito net the reel was wrapped in.

He paddles down the eastern edge of the gulf past mangrove forests and rocky promontories and islets. The land this side is much drier than Menzies and Axle’s camp. Sandstone breakaways rise from the spinifex and bleached acacia. Inland it looks desolate. The creeks are small with rockbars or sandspits at their mouths. He labours right through the morning. The water is calm. Sweat rolls off him. He sees the islands rise slowly from the sea, distinguishing themselves from the enfolding land by their splashes of green. He makes the high red blunt one his bearing and in the early afternoon, as the sky builds with monsoon cloud, he comes into its shadow and looks up at its mesa bluffs and strangling vines and clamouring trees. There are boabs on the beach. Birds flit through their web of shadows. This is it, he thinks. This has to be the place.

VI

The day after she found the envelope in Jim’s desk Georgie went walking to clear her head and make some decisions. The morning was hot and clear. Out on the packed sand of the point she came upon Yogi B//ehr parked in the company truck. Surfers were just visible in the distance; they sat like kelp bunches out on the reef where the crests of incoming swells peeled back as vapour trails in the northeasterly. Yogi had binoculars clamped one-handed to his face as Georgie sidled up to the window to say hello. One horny foot was up on the dash and the cab stank of ouzo. It took him a while to register her presence.