Shaman's Blood (32 page)

Anxious, she turned around and headed back to the lodge, kicking herself for leaving Ned alone for even fifteen minutes.

By the time she reached Fryer Street again, she was hot and sweaty. The hotel parking lot was empty except for two men standing beside an old Land Rover, talking and laughing in what her Southern friends would have called a “good old boy” way. She pegged them for locals, in their T-shirts, work shirts, khaki shorts, and hiking boots, until she realized one of them was Ned. He had taken so immediately to local culture she hadn’t even recognized him.

“Ah, here comes the love of my life,” he called as soon as he spotted her. “Ollie, meet Suzie, my wife.”

Suzanne smiled at the stranger, wondering what the hell Ned had gotten them into now. To her, Ned said, “Suzie, this is Ollie Barnes, and he’s driving us all the way to Cooktown.”

Over a dinner of Spanish mackerel and mangoes at a packed bar & grille, Oliver Barnes, mechanic for hire and otherwise jack of all trades, brushed his sun-bleached hair out of his eyes and explained himself.

“When I was havin’ a bit of a chinwag with your hubby here about Land Rovers and such, I mentioned that I’m headin’ up to Cooktown to check on my mum who’s not been well this past year,” he said, between bites of a salad the size of small gardens. “She lives by herself and it’s just me that looks after her.”

He uncorked a bottle of rich, fruity wine. Shiraz that appealed to Suzanne. She resisted the urge to gulp it down in a couple of swallows.

“As I was telling him,” Ollie said, refilling her glass, “I’ve been keeping that Land Rover humming for the last ten years; she’ll go anywhere. There’s nawt mechanical I wouldn’t have a stab at. Fair dinkum, that is! You can take it to the bank.”

Suzanne looked at Ned, wondering how much of their mission he’d imparted to the enthusiastic Mr. Barnes whose gray eyes twinkled with mischief under his sunburned squint.

 “I explained to Ollie that I’m doing illustrations for a book,” said Ned, turning his eyes to her. “We’re researching Aboriginal rock art, especially anything to do with sorcery and magic.”

“Plenty of that around,” said Ollie. He bit into a sausage roll and nodded cheerfully. “The start of the Wet’s not the best time of year to be going walkabout, y’know. Much better if you’d come in June.”

“Sorry, that couldn’t be helped. Our schedules just didn’t work out for any other time of year,” Ned said. Suzanne was again struck by his ability to lie so glibly on the fly.

“Do you think the roads will be passable?” she asked.

“What roads?” Ollie chortled. Suzanne blanched.

“Hey now,” he said, patting her on the shoulder, “y’just need the right equipment, vehicle, guide, and provisions, that’s all. I wouldn’t advise the two of you to just take off into the never-never by yerselves, obviously.”

“What would you advise?” she asked.

“That you hire me to be your driver, tour guide, and bush tucker expert,” he said grinning. “I was born in Cooktown and know a lot of places along the rivers—that would be the Palmer and the Laura—what nobody’s ever seen. At least, no white bodies.” He was chuckling, leaning back in his chair. Suzanne smiled; she wanted to trust him, and she was pretty sure that Ned already did.

She searched his face. “So, Ollie, do you think you can take us around to some of these sites, and, um, keep us out of trouble?”

Ollie folded his hands over his flat stomach. “No worries, mate, she’ll be apples all the way.”

Suzanne assumed this meant something to the effect of hunky-dory. She was warming to him and was beginning to think his sudden intrusion into their saga was a stroke of good luck. It was easy to see that Ned had bonded with him and was relating to him like a long-lost friend. 

Ollie turned to Ned. “About that rock art, what kinds of sorcery pictures are you keen on, mate?”

“Well, we’re hoping to find images of dingoes and serpents, and maybe evidence of curses or magic spells, anything that would make the book dramatic and exciting.”

Suzanne bit her lip. “When are we talking about leaving?”

“As soon as we can,” said Ned.

“Then tomorrow morning we’ll have a cuppa and just get on with it. I was getting bored around here fixin’ Kombis and Rovers. Looks like you blokes have something far more interesting on the barbie. So I think I’ll just help you out, for an appropriate fee, of course. An experienced guide like meself can’t be had for free. We can stop over with my mum up in Cooktown; she’ll be glad for the company. Just don’t let her overfeed you.”

“Cool, man, er, mate. You’re a life saver,” said Ned, and Suzanne could tell he meant it.

“Thanks, Ollie. Really,” she added.

“No worries. It looks like your little trip is right up my alley.”

She wondered, though, how much of Ned’s story Mr. Oliver Barnes was buying. He seemed like a character who’d heard it all and then some, and she couldn’t see them fooling him for long.

She sighed and held her wine glass out for a refill. It really didn’t matter what he believed or didn’t believe, as long as he could get them where they needed to go, and from the way he talked, he seemed plenty capable. Perhaps a little luck had crossed their paths, after all. 

Chapter 27

December 1969

Sunset over the Endeavour River at Cooktown was as beautiful as Ollie’s mother had promised. Ned reached his hand out to help Suzanne onto the grassy hilltop where they had a spectacular lookout over the river’s mouth. Across the water, rocky outcroppings protruding from tree-covered hills.

The silver-gray water was dappled with an archipelago of green-topped islets. Across the inlet, hills became a silhouette against a gray and yellow sky. Just below curdled clouds, the sun shot through in a dazzling spotlight of lemon-white, reflected as a single bright patch on the slumbering water. Ned and Suzanne stood arm in arm, watching the tiny spits of land turn black in the fading light.

“Worth the whole trip so far,” Suzanne remarked.

Ned pulled her close. “Better than anything I could paint.”

The warmth of her shoulder against his chest and her hair brushing his face calmed the tumult inside. He felt in range of the target now, his nerves so jumpy he could barely sit still. But standing here, surrounded by rocks and trees and water, Ned enjoyed a quiet moment’s respite.

The bones of the continent and the deep azure waters of the Coral Sea were vastly more ancient than the settlement Captain Cook had founded here in the 1700s. Ned felt that antiquity through the soles of his feet as he walked barefoot over the grass and rock. Something inside him was trying to reconnect to the land.

“Suzie? Are you sorry?”

“What? Of course not.” Suzanne was looking up at him. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else on earth right now.”

Ned closed his eyes. “I mean, are you sorry you met me? If things don’t turn out all right, I apologize now for ruining your life.”

“Stop,” she said. “We’ll do what we have to do, and then we’ll go home. Or who knows, maybe we could even settle here.”

Ned gave her a squeeze. “Trippin’ idea, a landscape painter wouldn’t hurt for subject matter here, would he?” He encircled her in his arms. “Sydney would be cool, too.”

“Brisbane,” she said.

“Cairns.”

“Townsville?”

“Alice Springs.”

“Hey, we didn’t go there.”

“I know, I just like the sound of the name.”

Suzanne was laughing now, and Ned’s heart felt lighter. It soothed his soul when she laughed.

“We could name our firstborn Alice,” she said, grinning.

“Whatever you like,” he responded, playing along. She hugged him back with more warmth than usual, which made him wonder. This was the calm before the hurricane, the remaining moments in which you could gather your belongings and strap yourself in before all hell was unleashed. He was being pulled strongly now and felt certain that somewhere down one of those four-wheel-drive-only tracks of the Outback his nemesis waited.

When they reached Mrs. Barnes’ small cottage, Ollie met them at the door.

“I was about to come looking for you two,” he said, running rough fingers through his blond hair.

Ollie’s mother, a short, squat woman whose gray-brown hair was pulled tightly back from her face and snagged with the claws of a pink plastic hairclip, beckoned them out to the tiny screened back porch. “Have a stubby before dinner,” she said, handing out short bottles of beer from a portable cooler. “But only one each, mind,” she said, “coz yer might want to take a few with you. How long did you say, lurv?”

Ollie chugged at the bottle and wiped his mouth on the tail of his camp shirt. “The Rover’s fueled and ready and all the camping gear’s stowed. I think if we leave early in the morning, we could get into the Outback past Laura by sundown, camp on the river and then spend a day or two muckin’ about, and then a service stop in Laura or Lakeland on the way back. So, on the outside of four days all told, assuming we don’t get stuck or flooded and have to dig ourselves out.” 

Mrs. Barnes nodded. “Sounds ‘bout right.” She reached out and patted Ned on the knee. “You blokes have a safe trip, and I’ll be lookin’ fer yeh ‘bout this time next week, if Ollie here does his job right.”

They were up early next morning, and although Ned felt an urgency to be off, Ollie’s mother refused to let them get away without a hearty breakfast of fried eggs and tomatoes, avocado slices, spicy potato salad, and just-baked scones with ginger jam.

When they were finally ready to leave, she followed Ned and Suzanne outside and stood with them on the front stoop of the cottage. A bougainvillea heavy with dark salmon-pink clusters covered a trellis over the doorway so that everyone except Mrs. Barnes had to duck under its thorny arms to come out. It had rained that night, and the yard was dappled with puddles. Droplets of water sparkled all over the garden in the morning light.

 “I wish you wouldn’t just blow through like this,” Mrs. Barnes said. “I hardly get used to seeing Ollie and then he’s gone again.” She swatted his backside and grinned with gold-rimmed molars. Ned watched her, amused. There was a bit of the pirate about her, and it wouldn’t have surprised him to learn that Ollie was descended from the late Captain Cook’s privateering stock.

Suzanne handed Mrs. Barnes a blue aerogramme. “Would you mind posting this for me? It’s to my brother Hal back in the States.”

“No problem, luv.” Mrs. Barnes gave Suzanne a final hug and pocketed the letter. Ned let his breath out. He truly hoped they would all be standing here like this in the sunlit garden with Ollie’s mum sometime next week.

*    *    *

By ten o’clock, they were rumbling along a fairly well-traveled road toward a town called Lakeland that Ollie described as a service town, which meant a place where they could buy petrol, tinned food, and ice, and replenish their water supply. It would be their last stop along the Peninsular Development Road, which led toward an even smaller service townlet called Laura, but Ollie planned to drive them off into the bush before they got that far.

When they pulled into Lakeland, Ollie parked the Land Rover in the shade of a large mango tree just off the road.

“Alrighty, mate, let’s have a look at that drawing of yours again.”

Ned rummaged in the zippered side pocket of his backpack and pulled out a folded sheet and gave it to Ollie, who flattened it out and studied it silently for a moment.

“You got me up a gum tree on this one,” he said, fingering Ned’s pencil sketch of the cleft in the side of a bluff with a unique grouping of boulders beside it and pooling water at its base. “I’ve never seen this particular formation in my rambles, but that’s not to say it ain’t there, ‘course. You’re certain it’s in this area, are you?”

Ned nodded. “The guy I was telling you about at the Foundation told me it looked like a bluff in the Outback where Aboriginal people once lived. He said the closest town was a place called Laura.”

Ollie scratched his head and replaced his hat. “Well, who am I to second-guess an old doctor-man, hey? Let’s see those two color ones.”

Ned unfolded the two watercolor paintings.

“Obviously, it’s a plateau at the top of a gorge, but which one I dunno. And where’d you say you got these directions?”

Ned hesitated. “From the person who wants the book illustrations. Sorry, he couldn’t give me names.”

“Tell you what,” said Ollie, handing the pages back to Ned. “I know where the major site clusters are, so I’ll take you to the closest one. It’s a couple of hours walk from a campsite I know about. If you’re lucky, we might even stumble onto your spot somewhere down river where there’s some high sandstone bluffs I haven’t explored yet. Understand, this area is riddled with sacred sites and ceremonial caves. Not too many people know about ‘em yet, far as I can tell, ‘cept for locals like the old stringybark fellas who showed me where to find them. The people who made those places have been gone so long nobody remembers who they were.”

“I’m sure this is the right area,” said Ned.

“And how d’yeh know that?” Ollie was looking at him through narrowed eyes from underneath the brim of his hat.

“It … feels right.”

“Well, yer the bloke’s paying the money, so if it feels right to you, we’re off.”

Ned shot a look at Suzanne in the back seat, but her mouth was set in a tight line and her eyes revealed nothing. He knew she was resigned to go along with him wherever this wild goose chase took them.

Ollie’s short-bodied Land Rover was loud and hot, and its stiff shocks registered every pothole and ripple in the dirt and gravel road heading away from Lakeland. It was a jolting, bumping ride that took some getting used to. Sitting in the front passenger seat, Ned gritted his teeth and endured it; he hoped that Suzanne, strapped in behind them, wasn’t too miserable.

In fact, she turned out to be a real trooper, as Ollie observed when they’d left the main road and turned onto a deeply rutted track that climbed up and down through rain-forest ferns that covered the steep embankments of the trail. Occasionally the narrow road opened out into stands of native bamboo higher than a man's head. Melaleuca filled the banks of creeks, their twisted misshapen trunks hemming in the Rover and scraping against its roof as it splashed through shallow watercourses. Often one side of the track would be washed out lower than the other so that the Rover leaned precariously, its tires chewing rocks and damp earth before righting itself again.