Gunshot Road (11 page)

Three Mile

I CAUGHT MERV TODD
as he was locking up, handed over the iPod, managed to persuade him to give Danny a few days' work, said we'd sort it when I got back to town. Ten minutes later I was rattling down the red dirt road that led to Jojo's shack.

Jojo's shack. The phrase said more about our relationship than I wanted it to. My park ranger boyfriend was as sweet as cherry pie, in or out of the bedroll, but we both had other things in our lives. Two serial non-committers. I still thought of it as his place, not ours. I spent most of my time at Moonlight Downs, he spent most of his out in the desert; at present he was working on the establishment of a bilby sanctuary somewhere in the del Fuego.

I turned into the drive, caught a glimpse of a figure on the veranda. My heart leapt: Jojo? I came closer. Saw a woman in a turquoise dress, and my heart settled and warmed. Hazel Flinders.

A warm embrace, a whisper. ‘Em.'

‘Haze.'

‘You said I was welcome anytime.'

‘Any and every.'

We linked arms, walked inside, chatted as I made tea.

‘How long you stopping?'

‘Just tonight—back out to Moonlight in the morning.'

‘What brings you in?'

‘Deliver some paintings. That gallery you told me bout, in Sydney…'

‘Ubinger's?'

‘That lady come all the way out ere to see me; she want more of my work.'

‘Said she would, Haze. They know quality when they see it.' It had taken a lot of persuading. She was intensely shy about her art, but a few weeks ago we'd bundled up a few of her paintings, sent them off to a dealer I'd met down south.

‘Talking about a solo exhibition.'

‘Not surprised.' Hazel's paintings were extraordinary: they didn't just talk about country, they manifested it.

‘She want me to come down the big smoke.'

‘When?'

‘Sometime.' A note of uncertainty. ‘Anytime, she said. Pick a date, they'll arrange a show. Reckon I oughta go?'

Hazel: so strong and self-assured in her own world, so ill-at-ease in the whitefeller one. ‘Nest of snakes down there, Haze. Tell em you need a police escort.' I nodded at the car.

She smiled, frowned. ‘That's the other reason I come in. See how you're getting on in this kurlupartu job.'

‘It's about to get interesting.'

‘Don't like the sound of that.'

‘Heading out bush tomorrow.'

Her eyes lit up. ‘Comin out Moonlight way?'

‘Opposite direction. Back down the Gunshot.'

‘Oh?' She turned her head to the west. ‘Maybe you'll catch up with that feller of yours.'

‘Doubt it. Jojo's fallen in with a bunch of bilbies. Those little marsupial fuckers are seeing a lot more of him than I am.'

We parked ourselves on the veranda, cup in hand, back to back. I heard a car come rumbling down the track, and Bandy Mabulu's purple panel van pulled up in front of us. It was getting on for dark, but I could make out a figure I took to be Danny huddled in the passenger seat.

I got up and leaned against a pole. ‘Bandy.'

‘Em.'

He climbed out of the car, looked back down the track, a tense glance: making sure he wasn't being followed.

‘You know Hazel Flinders, Bandy?'

‘Sure. Moonlight girl. How are ya, Hazel?'

She grunted a reply.

‘Everything okay, Ban?'

‘We got a problem.'

‘We?'

‘Me and the boy.'

Hazel rose to her feet. ‘Better leave you to it.' She went inside, clearly not wanting to get involved with police work.

‘What's wrong?' I asked Bandy. ‘Go back and get a plasma TV off Merv this time?'

‘Worse—his car.' Bandy squirmed, watching my expression. ‘It's them bloody Crankshaft boys—Danny just come along for the ride. Cops caught up with em out on Brumby Road—they made a break for the bush, but somebody must have spotted Danny. They come sniffin round half an hour ago. Didn't know nothing for sure, but thirty seconds with Danny and they'd know. Boy couldn't lie to save himself.'

‘Which cops?'

‘Fat one was doin all the talkin.'

Harley.

I lowered my voice. ‘Bandy, I really don't know if you're doing him any favours, hiding him away like this. What if I take him back down the station straightaway, explain…'

‘They'd lock him away for years! I know them buggers. He's already on a good behaviour bond.'

He strode past me, almost pulled me towards the end of the veranda. Dragging me out of earshot from the boy. I caught his ragged eyes in the window's light. ‘He wouldn't survive, Em. I can
feel
it.'

‘We're not talking Devil's Island here, Bandy. I don't know what else he's got on his sheet, but the worst that'll happen is a spell in the Juvie Detention Centre; half the boys in town have been there.'

‘But he's not strong, Danny. Place like that, break him in half. He's been so strange lately—yellin in the night, runnin away—Christ knows what he's been takin…'

I crossed my arms. ‘Had some pretty good role models, hasn't he?'

‘Orright, I know. I haven't been the perfect father. And as for his mother…' He shrugged, helpless. ‘But that's why I'm desperate to see he doesn't go the same way.'

I was moved by the sight of him standing there, feet squared, hat scrunched up in his hand. ‘Sorry Bandy, that was unfair. You've done a great job—it's just hard for a young boy—this bloody town…'

‘Like a glob of sump oil in yer throat,' Bandy nodded. ‘That's why I wanner get him out bush.' He gazed at me with pleading eyes. ‘Only one place I'd feel safe about him being right now, and you're heading there in the morning.'

I heard a noise behind us: Danny was standing at the foot of the stairs. How much he'd heard I wasn't sure, but one glimpse of that haunted face—you could almost see the blue lights spinning in his irises, hear the silent siren in his ears—and I was gone.

What were Cockburn's parting words?

No hitch hikers.

I wondered how he'd feel about a fugitive from the law.

‘It make me nervous'

BANDY LEFT WITH A
gruff hug and a warning to Danny: stay out of trouble and town. Drove back down the track in his rumbling van. When he'd gone, we stood there in an awkward silence.

‘Be leaving at first light,' I said.

No answer.

‘Want something to eat?'

He might have mumbled something, but food was the last thing on his mind.

We went inside, joined Hazel. Danny looked rattled and restless, shamefaced. He moved around the room, laying hands on the thick wooden beams like he hoped to absorb their equanimity.

After a while his natural curiosity kicked in and he began picking up objects from the mantelpiece—a chime I'd brought back from China, an azurite crystal, a wooden elephant—turning them over in his thin fingers. Still nervous, though; he looked like the elephant was about to trample him.

Hazel was sitting with her back against the hearth, watching. ‘There's a story behind that statue,' she said.

‘What's that?' he asked suspiciously.

‘You tell him, Em.'

‘Few years ago, I was in Thailand…'

‘You been Thailand?'

‘She been everywhere, boy,' said Hazel. ‘Shut up and listen.'

‘You seen a real elephant?'

‘Seen one? I
rode
one.'

His eyebrows arced. ‘How was that?'

‘Wouldn't recommend it—bloody thing bolted on me.'

His jaw dropped. ‘What happened?'

‘Some idiot took a photo and spooked it. Jockey abandoned ship, so I did too. Jumped off plenty of horses in my time, but this was a damn sight bigger than a horse and I landed on me arse. Couldn't walk straight for a week, shuffling around Thailand like a hobbled mare.'

He laughed, the kind of spontaneous campfire outburst he might have let out in his better days.

‘Come on, Danny.' I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Don't tell me you're not famishing.'

‘He's a boy,' said Hazel. ‘Always famishin.'

‘Might have something,' the boy conceded.

Hazel and I knocked up a feed of scrambled eggs, sausages and fried tomatoes. While we were working I heard the ring of steel strings floating in through the open door.

I went onto the veranda. He'd found the old guitar I left there.

My guitar: what a joke that was. I'd rescued it from the hard rubbish collection a few weeks before, figured I'd see if I could make anything out of the old-time country songs that were forever rolling through my head. All I'd made to date was a mess of my fingertips and a couple of buzzy chords.

‘Can you tune that thing?' I asked.

‘Might try.'

He ran a thumb across the strings, fiddled with the heads, had it beautifully tuned before that first accidental chord faded away. Then he sat on the couch and picked away at a rolling melody in such a casual way that his fingers seemed to float over the strings. Hazel came and stood in the doorway, listened. ‘Boy, why you runnin round stealin cars when you got it in you to make a sound like that?'

We shouldn't have been surprised, given his genes.

He played some more, sent silver chains of melody spooling off into the night. When he laid the instrument aside, he seemed more settled: music did things for him. I dished up and he ate hungrily, asked for more. When we'd finished we all sat out on the steps, Danny with the guitar in his hands, idly strumming. He paused and cracked his knuckles. Stretched his linked hands overhead, dreadlocks dangling over the instrument.

Hazel went in to make more tea, came out with a sheet of paper in her hands, a puzzled expression on her brow.

‘What's this?'

I looked up.

‘Remember I went to Green Swamp last week? Old white bloke who died? Had a pile of rocks in his yard. That's a sketch of it.'

She tilted it, held it up to the light. ‘More than a pile of rocks. Who drew it?'

‘Chinese woman; some sort of artist.'

‘She got a sharp eye.'

‘Mean anything to you?'

She ran a finger across its rough surface, shuddered. ‘I don't like it.'

‘Made me feel uncomfortable too. Buggered if I know why.'

‘People shouldn't oughter touch country. Stir things up. Devil things. Dangerous.'

‘Maybe he had a reason. He wasn't a bad man, Doc.'

‘Maybe.' She didn't look convinced, and the sense of wellbeing we'd been circling had somehow evaporated. Danny leaned over, took a long look at the picture. Seemed even more troubled than Hazel, and with good reason. The rocks were on his country, not hers. If there was a price to be paid, it would be him and his mob who did the paying.

Somewhere down by the creek a kurlunkurru called. Danny looked at me and shuddered; round here the peaceful dove carries a warning of imminent death.

He stared off into the distance, frowned.

‘What that noise?'

‘The bird?'

‘No—out past that one—more like machine. That whistling pitch and drill…'

I listened intently, but could hear nothing out of the ordinary. He sat with one foot in the dirt, chewed a lip, studied the shivering dark like he feared it was about to swallow him whole.

We went inside. I made up a bed for him on the lounge room floor. As he crawled into it, I saw him cast an apprehensive eye around the room, the nervousness coming in like a chilling mist.

Hazel drifted off into the pure, untroubled sleep of the just. What was holding me back? The boy's anxiety. I could feel it through the wall: the sharp, shallow breaths, the stiff limbs. The silence. It was a hot night, but there was more to his discomfort than weather.

I went and stood in the doorway. He'd left the light on, and was lying on top of the bedroll; his legs were splayed, his hands over his ears.

‘You okay there, Danny?'

No response.

‘Danny?'

He took away his hands. ‘Em'ly?'

‘Yep?'

‘I might move my bed outside. That okay?'

‘Sure. What's the problem?'

There was a long silence.

‘Danny, talking might help.'

A further delay, then he whispered, ‘That clock.'

‘The clock?'

‘Make me nervous.'

I followed his gaze; Jojo's old green alarm clock was clunking away on the mantelpiece.

‘I can shut it up.'

‘Don't want to be a trouble to you.'

‘No trouble.' I picked up the ancient timepiece, turned it over in my hands. How to turn the bastard off? It was a chunky monster, covered in buttons and knobs, flashes of rust. Barnacles, probably. It had been round since the Flood.

I made a frustrating exploration of the clock's gadgetry, then gave up and threw it out the window, heard it land with a clang and a tinkle on something hard. ‘Fuck Jojo and his clock—it's as unreliable as he is. Anything else you want me to throw out while I'm at it?'

‘Isn't he gonna be cranky?'

‘Nah. I'll sort him out, the stingy bastard. Think you'll sleep now?'

‘Might try.'

I went back into my room. All was quiet, then a whisper came from Hazel's side of the bed: ‘That's a troubled boy.'

‘Think he'll be okay now.'

I rolled and snuggled up against her, drifted off to sleep. Woke in the depths of the night knowing something was wrong. Knew, before I got up and looked, that Danny's bedroll was empty.

Jesus, what now?

I remembered the boy's comment on the road the other day, how he'd gone to Stonehouse to get away from the ‘motors and wheels' of Bluebush; I thought about his ‘whistling pitch and drill' tonight. Persistent mechanical noises: they got under his skin. Weird. And worrying: in his drug-and-booze-addled condition, Danny was developing an allergy to the twenty-first century.

What had set him off this time? Were there any other noises in the shack that could be bugging him?

The fridge started up: a jagged, intermittent buzz.

Shit a brick. Big ask to throw that out the window. Wasn't too keen on turning it off, either: a sausage wouldn't last five minutes without refrigeration this time of the year; milk, meat, cheese. Cold beer.

I scouted around, checked the main room, the veranda. The boy was nowhere to be seen. Had he run away? Was he out stealing more cars with the Crankshafts?

Then I heard the soft strains of the guitar: metallic sparkle-notes drifted in through the screen door. I followed the music, spotted him sitting under a coral tree on the edge of the clearing, approached slowly.

His voice came drifting in, a young boy's delicate lilt, every note spot on.

We been out in the desert, four or five days
In the wind and the weather, the midsummer haze
Worn out and torn out, battered and blown
So we turned the Toyota and headed for home

He stopped singing, picked out the melody, a sweet thing, full of curves and unexpected turns.

‘Danny?'

He spun around, his big eyes flashing in the moonlight.

‘Sorry Em'ly.'

I shook my head. ‘Nothing to be sorry for.'

He fidgeted, random little riffs and runs on the neck of the instrument. ‘Got a bit rattled. Singin helps me settle down. Didn't mean to wake you.'

‘If I was woken up like that every night, I wouldn't be complaining. Lovely song. You write it?'

‘S'pose so.'

‘What's it about?'

‘You got me thinking when you showed me that picture. Wrote that one about a trip I made with that old uncle of mine, the Jupurulla bin finish now. He used to go out bush with Doc.'

‘Well it's beautiful.' I watched him for a moment. ‘Think you can go to sleep now?'

‘Maybe,' he replied, but his hands were shaking. By the time I made it back to bed the music had started up again.

Hazel put a hand on mine. ‘You doin the right thing, Em, takin that boy back to his people.'