Blood Junction (21 page)

It was pitch dark, and the only thing she could see was the faint glimmer of the old man’s eyes when they looked her way.
She put her hand out to find the perimeter of the cave but it brushed something rough and prickly and she gave a muffled yelp.

“Put it on, why don’t you? You’ll be cold later.”

India pulled the heavy woollen blanket towards her, draped it over her shoulders. Like the old man, it smelled of wild mushrooms;
porcini and shiitake with a hint of dried sweat. He was busy with something, she couldn’t tell what, but she could hear soft
brushing and cracking noises, and smell ash and the scent of bloody meat.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’ll bugger Jimmy’s dogs up real good. They’ll find your clothes scattered over a mile square, but no trace of you, just
me.” He chuckled, a dry, hollow sound that she found comforting. “You stay here. I’ll be back come dawn.”

“What if they come to this cave?”

A thick silence settled all around.

“Hello?” she said, her voice small.

There was no reply. The old man had vanished without a sound.

India peered out of the cave, parted the brush. The moon was high in the sky and only a few stars could be seen in the bright
light. She could see a creek far below, sand shining like silver, and the glossy white trunks of ghost gum trees.

No sign of her pursuers, or the old man.

She lay there, watching and listening for another few minutes. The breeze had died, and she started to shiver. The old man
had been right. It was still quite warm, but now that her sweat had cooled she felt cold. India wrapped the rough blanket
closer and slithered back into the cave. Curled up like an animal on the sandy bed, she rested her head on her arm, and gazed
into the darkness. She thought she could see the old man in the corner, his arms above his head, but it wasn’t him, it was
Lauren, rubbing her hands over her short-cropped hair, smiling.

So how do you like our good Australian bush?

I’d rather I wasn’t here.

Sure you wouldn’t, but you’ll be glad later, I swear.

Lauren, I’ve never been so scared before.

Rubbish,
’course you have. This ain’t no different, just a little more taxing on the physical side of things. Good thing you haven’t
run to fat or you’d be in big trouble.

I
am
in big trouble.

You’ll come good as you always do, don’t fuss so.

I’m cold, Lauren.

Tuck up tight in that blanket, hon. Think about that summer of eighty-two, the one we spent at Byron Bay. What a scorcher
that was.

Lauren was laughing, her head flung back, joyous and carefree, and in her dream, India was sure she could feel the heat of
that summer of eighty-two emanating from her smile.

When she awoke, dawn was close. The sky was flushed with lavender and the black shadows had melted into a deep blue. Nothing
moved outside the cave, not even a bird. All was hushed as if in expectation of something magnificent.

India gazed from her aerie, wondering if this was how it felt to be an eagle. The air was clear, the sun a peeping yellow
curve on the horizon, and if her feet hadn’t been so sore, she would have revelled in the view. Her fingers traced the jagged
lacerations around her ankles and down to the inner edges of her soles. She ached all over, from running half the night and
having slept on sand and rocks. She was hungry and thirsty. She wriggled backwards into the cave and looked around her.

Light trickled through a shaft in the rock above the cold fire. Pale figures danced on the cave’s walls, some throwing boomerangs
after kangaroos, others catching fish. Several gourds were ranked neatly side-by-side in one corner, and India found fresh
water in one, fresh rabbit meat—or was it kangaroo?—in the next, and dried leaves that smelled like thyme in the third. She
took three small sips of water, wanting to drink the whole bowl, but wary of depriving the old man when he returned.

“G’day.” The voice was soft.

The old man squatted by the entrance of the cave as if he’d never left, a long wooden stick by his broad dirty feet, a satchel
at his side.

Did my thinking of him bring him here?
she wondered, rather enchanted by the idea.

“No,” the old man said. “I told you I’d be back at dawn.”

She forgot all about her thirst, her throbbing feet, and stared at him. “Did I speak without realizing it, or did you just
read my mind?”

“You white fellers,” he said with a sigh, “too uptight for your own good.” He gestured at the gourd, and told her to drink
her fill.

“Are you sure?” she checked.

“I came by Easter Spring on my way here. Go for it.”

India tipped the gourd back and drank until her thirst vanished. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she sat on her
haunches and watched him open the satchel. He carefully withdrew something she couldn’t make out. “Betcha hungry, hey?”

India’s stomach rumbled loudly in response. “No. Not particularly,” she lied. She had no intention of eating raw rabbit meat
or witchetty grubs—large white maggots extracted from trees—or any other traditional Aboriginal food he might offer.

He looked disappointed. “I went a long ways for this,” he said.

I don’t care how far you went
, she thought.
I am not eating anything you offer me, and that’s that
.

“Not even cross-ant?”

“Cross-ant?”

The old man shuffled forward, hand outstretched.

To her amazement, in his blackened, grimy palm, sat a large half-moon pastry: a croissant.

India thought of the dry landscape surrounding them, nothing but folded ribbons of brown and yellow stretching for miles and
the odd white splash of a salt lake.

“Where on earth did you get this?” she asked disbelievingly.

“Eight ’til late,” he said, his tone slightly waspish as if to say: Where else?

“Eight ’til late?” she repeated dumbly.

He rolled his eyes. “The BP shop. Open from eight ’til ten ’til they decided to stay open twenty-four hours.”

“You’ve been to Cooinda?”

“Nowhere else around, but.” Pushing the croissant towards her, he said with some anxiety, “Go on. I knew you wouldn’t want
bush tucker for brekka, no white fellers do.”

Dutifully India ate, watched by the old man like a hawk would its young. “Delicious,” she said, and licked her dirty fingers,
one by one.

He leaned over and pinched her cheek, quite hard. “You’re too skinny,” he said disapprovingly. “But I’ve more grub if you
want.”

Expecting another croissant, she said, “Yes, please.”

With a flourish, the old man whipped out two squares of yellow sponge topped with chocolate icing.

“Oh,” India said, momentarily disconcerted. “Oh, Lamingtons, my favorite!” She took one and bit into it with a relish she
could never have believed she’d muster.

The old man nodded approvingly as she ate. “Can’t fight those buggers on an empty stomach,” he said.

India felt like hugging him. Not only had he rescued her but he’d traipsed for miles to get her food he thought she might
like, that she
did
like.

“I heard in town that your name is Indi,” he said.

“India,” she replied. “What’s yours?”

“I am Milangga.”

“Milangga, you’re a good man,” she said through a mouthful of sticky Lamington.

“And you’re a good-lookin’ woman,” he replied, his huge black eyes on hers. “Why ain’t there a bloke to help you out in this?”

At once she was aware of her nakedness. It was the words “good-looking” that had triggered it, and she was dropping the cake,
scrabbling for the blanket, pulling it across her breasts and her groin.

Milangga shook his head in sorrow. “Why d’you hide? You liked your skin last night, why not now?”

India had wriggled into a defensive ball. Then, remembering her naked flight, she paused. He was right, she realized. While
under pursuit, her lack of clothing had barely touched her consciousness. As she recalled the sensation of soft night air
against her bare skin she smiled. She dropped the blanket, shrugged, and continued to eat. Milangga merely gave her a nod,
casual, uncaring, and stirred the dead embers of the fire with the end of his long stick. “You should stay here a few days,”
he said. “After that, things’ll settle down and you’ll be able to move around.”

India merely looked at him and thought:
I’m in your hands, old man. You’re my guide out here and I’m in your hands
.

The look he returned was filled with pleasure. “You like witchetties?”

“No,” she said, in her most definite tone.

“They’re real good.” He looked at the remaining Lamington with puzzlement. “Much nicer than that stuff. You might like ’em.”

India didn’t, as it happened, like witchetties. The flavor was okay, a bit like pureed chicken and sweetcorn, but it was the
thought of eating a giant maggot—crunching through its outer coat into the soft juices below—that made her throat jam and
her stomach rebel.

“Sorry,” she said as Milangga carefully extracted yet another from the torn root of an acacia bush. “I’ll stick to croissant,
thanks.”

He laughed at her, his teeth yellow and long as a horse’s as they bit through the witchetty’s skin. “Very good,” he said,
slurping noisily. “Protein, very good.”

India ingested her protein through rabbit and kangaroo, both of which the old man seemed to catch without trouble. He told
her he used a boomerang to hunt them, but on the second day she confronted him as a liar.

“I found a trap,” she said indignantly.

“Anything in it?”

She looked away. “A rabbit.”

Unabashed, he grinned at her. “I’m too bloody old to go chasing after them animals with nothing but a bloody boomerang. Didn’tcha
think of that?”

That evening she asked him how old he was. His skin was like oiled leather in the firelight, his gray hair a woolly skullcap.
To her he looked as ageless as the countryside around them. He shrugged. “My mother told me I was born on your fool’s day,
but I don’t know what year. I could be sixty. Maybe seventy. What does it matter?”

She looked down at her own body, smooth and supple, and then at his creased skin. Out here all that mattered was your fitness,
and your ability to hunt and gather food.

“It doesn’t,” she said.

M
IKEY SAT ON THE HARD EARTH AND WAITED. THE MOON
was behind a bank of clouds and the air was still. The Rosses’ house had an abandoned look that gave him confidence, but
still he waited, just in case. He wondered where India was, and whether she was awake too. He wondered at her courage. Her
skill in avoiding Stan’s manhunt. Anyone else would have stayed put rather than face the unknown dangers of the outback. But
not India.

He checked his watch, and pressed through the greenery. A soft thudding told him he had startled a couple of kangaroos. They
were obviously hanging around in the hope that the Rosses would return. He walked to the back door and broke the police tape,
brought out a small leather pouch of tools he’d requisitioned from a burglar he’d caught five years ago and picked the lock
easily. He slipped inside, took a penlight from his windbreaker and shone it around. The place was a mess. Cupboards and drawers
were open, their contents strewn on the floor. He moved quickly from room to room. It had already been thoroughly searched,
but what the hell. They might have missed something.