Gunshot Road (20 page)

Gutter Camp

THE CROWD DISPERSED SOON
afterwards, and I drifted along in their company. People recognised me, laughed appreciatively at my skimpy little outfit, thought it was cool. When we came to the hospital, I couldn't bring myself to enter those cold glass white-feller doors. I kept going, found myself wandering alongside a big woman who gazed at me with bloodshot eyes.

‘Em'ly Tempest!'

‘Rosie.' Brambles.

‘Where you goin, my little parnparr?' Her voice, smashed by years of abuse, was sympathetic, almost warm. I wondered if she remembered that every time we ran into one another it was in the middle of a brawl.

‘Buggered if I know, Rosie.'

We were at the Gutter Camp now, a ring of ramshackle shelters in a sea of moonlit cans and broken bottles, a huddle of shabby figures crouching at fires and sipping at pannikins—of tea, I was surprised to observe. Not a drop of liquor to be smelled. The uplifting mood of the Memo Hall must have settled upon the entire town.

Rosie peered into my smashed-up face, seemed to recognise something. A kindred spirit? ‘You lookin lost, Em. Got somewhere to sleep?'

‘Been in hospital, Rosie.'

‘Aw, you doan wanner go back there.'

‘No, don't suppose I do.'

‘You welcome to stay here.'

Kenny Wednesday was picking away at a two-string guitar. I made a mental note to give him my own instrument first chance I got: he'd make better use of it than I ever would. Cynthia Winton was feeding a baby. The Crankshafts were snoring in three-part disharmony.

‘Appreciate that, Rosie.'

‘Why you in hospital? Some feller give you a flogging, did he?'

‘Sort of.'

‘Ah, my poor Nangali. They mostly bastards—and the bitches are worse. You gotta watch that sneaky little piece, Cindy—she keeps a butterfly knife in her bra. I tried to give you a hand the other night.'

‘Thanks for that—you saved my arse.'

She went quiet for a moment, then said, ‘I hear you been runnin round out west with that little boy of mine.'

‘Danny? Yeah, you should be proud of him. Turning into a real bush feller now. I love that boy: out there with them old people, learning lingo, singing the songs, fetchin his own food.'

Rosie cast a mournful eye about the tatterdemalion camp.

‘Yuwayi—he better off out there,' she said, and I caught a glimpse of the woman she must have been before the booze got hold of her. The woman who'd landed Bandy, mothered Danny.

She threw a Crankshaft out of his bedroll, dragged it up close to hers, gave me tea and toast and golden syrup, watched over me.

Somewhere over near the men, I heard Kenny Wednesday humming to himself.

‘Kenny!'

‘Emmy?'

‘That song you sang at the hall. That was a beautiful song.'

‘Why thank you.'

The fire flared and cast an eerie wash across us all.

‘It was about Andulka, wasn't it?'

‘My paparti, yuwayi.'

‘You really think he's still wandering round out west?'

‘Oh, he's out there.'

‘I heard he had a mountain fall on top of him.'

‘Take more than a mountain, kill a feller like that.' He broke into a laugh of such extravagance that I couldn't help but join in. ‘You ever meet that man?'

‘Yeah, I met him one time.'

‘Where that?'

I told him the story of my run-in with Andulka.

I was about ten or eleven at the time. My father had been doing a bit of prospecting out north-west of Majumanu, the community into which Andulka had wandered the year before.

Motor Jack's reputation preceded him, and he was prevailed upon to take a quick look at a new grader they were having trouble with. The quick look ended up as a week's work—the new grader was a second-hand snowplough palmed off onto the community by some enterprising salesman in Alice—and I was put into the school.

One sweltering afternoon Myrna, the teaching assistant, piled us into the back of a truck and drove out to the waterhole. I was first off the back, went galloping down the track.

I leapt over a log and came to a scrambling halt as the monstrous king brown basking there reared up and made to strike. Would have struck, if a boomerang hadn't come whirling out of nowhere and knocked it aside.

The boomerang was closely followed by a lithe young man who whipped the snake into the air and broke its back.

He regarded me, stern faced, dour eyed, uttered a sharp reproof. Glided down to the waterhole with an equipoise I've remembered to this day.

Behind me I heard a sharp intake of breath: Myrna, holding back a clutch of goggle-eyed kids.

‘Who was that?' I asked.

‘Andulka,' she whispered.

I swallowed hard; the man from the desert had a hell of a rep round here. He could kill you with a look.

‘What he say?'

‘He bin say you not from here. You move too fast: more better you slow down, take time for the country to know you.'

I frowned after him, as embarrassed by my own foolishness as I was annoyed at his arrogance.

My only other encounter with Andulka came the very next day as Jack and I were heading back out bush. We came across a mob of young fellers pushing a reluctant panel van down the road. From the sound the motor was making—none at all—they'd be pushing all the way to Bluebush.

Jack took a look under the bonnet. I watched as he worked his way through the systems: petrol, plugs, points.

‘No spark,' he announced.

A trio of young men peered in from the opposite side of the engine. One of them was Andulka.

When Jack found a spare plug in his toolbox and installed it, Andulka gazed at the spark flying between the points, puzzled, suspicious. Jack threw the old one away and, as we walked off, I saw Andulka pick it up. He studied it with such an intense curiosity that I couldn't help myself.

‘Hey, Jungarayi!'

He looked up.

‘Tricky thing, a machine. Better get a wriggle on if you want to understand it, old man like you.'

Andulka gazed at me, a ribbon of brown light turning in his eyes, then broke into a grin of such candour that I couldn't get it out of my head for days.

By the time I finished the story, the Gutter Camp had gone quiet. Either asleep or listening.

A voice cut into the silence from the direction of Kenny Wednesday's bedroll. ‘You said it, just like that?'

‘Think so.'

‘Told him to get a wriggle on?'

‘Far as I can recall, yep.'

‘Andulka?'

‘
Yes
.'

A further interlude, then another voice from the Crankshaft ensemble. ‘Jeez, Em—you got bigger balls than me.'

Radio waves and green fire

I WAS AWAKE EARLY
. Not as early as the flies, but. They were swarming overhead—and under chin, up nose, into the scabs and scars across my face. I pulled the blanket over, gazed out through a narrow slit.

A thin blue ribbon of smoke genied up from the fire. A scrap of meat glistered in a pan, yellow fat on charcoal bone. A play of colour ran through the ashes. Sand in the hair, grit in the eye. The shards of a thousand beer-bottle nights glinted in the dirt.

A little bus rolled up and two Indian nuns got out. One bun-shaped and sweet, the other a slice of crusty white, issuing orders. We all sprang to.

They gave me some first-class soup and a second-hand dress, seemed to know my name. Apparently there was an APB gone out. They offered me a lift back to hospital, but I told them I'd walk.

I knew I had to go back—there were people who'd be worrying for me. I didn't want to give them any more grief than I already had.

I gave Rosie a parting squeeze, headed off down the road.

The feeling on me was strange. Light-headed, invigorated. Like I was walking through a dream, the scuffed lawns and rutted nature strips of Bluebush soft-edged and fantastical.

The corrugated iron Catholic church loomed to the left of me, shimmering on the periphery of my altered state. I glanced into its cool, dark chambers. Turned, impelled by god knows what impulse, and walked in.

Stood on the threshold.

There was, I had to admit, a certain serenity about the place. The windows gleamed with blue-green light, the altar with bronze vessels, beautifully shaped. A candle glimmered on a stand. The interior as a whole radiated silence.

I walked down the aisle. I couldn't bring myself to kneel, but I sat in a pew, folded my hands, closed my eyes, took a series of deep, slow breaths.

If I'd intended anything, it was to sit there and soak up a minute or two's solitude before making my appearance at the hospital. But time slipped by, and it wasn't until I heard a noise behind me that I realised I was no longer alone. I glanced around: there was a man kneeling in one of the pews near the rear of the church.

Damn! My reputation was shot.

Or was it? He showed no sign of recognising, or even noticing, me: he was busily communicating with the Lord, his eyes were closed, his hands clenched, his lips moving. He was of medium height, an anonymous fellow with neat, thinning hair, gold-rimmed spectacles and a good shirt. Pink stripes.

Mister Suburbia; but that was his business. I just wished he wasn't there.

I was about to make a run for the exit when I heard more voices outside. Sunday morning: a service was about to begin. A blob of shadow pooled in the doorway, closely followed by the potato-sack figures of Graham Shuttlesmith and wife. Graham was the mayor of Bluebush, Lorraine the power behind the throne.

Trapped. I hunched into my pew, kept my back to them. More churchgoers arrived.

In five minutes the room was packed and Father Dal Santo was doing his thing up on the stage. God help me, the second Christian ceremony I'd been subjected to in a couple of weeks. Third, if you counted the funeral. Hoping it wasn't contagious was as close as I came to prayer.

I cast an oblique eye over the crowd, was surprised to see how many of the town's elite were there—as well as the Shuttlesmiths, I recognised George Gellie, MLA, Reg Smithers, DFC, the President of the RSL, Walter Demsky, the CEO of Copperhead Mines. I felt abashed at finding myself among such a distinguished alphabetical array: Emily Tempest, Sweet FA.

A lemon-faced old puss sat next to me, poked me with a skinny finger and proffered her hymnal, insisting I sing. A woman with a bird's nest on her head and legs like a relief map of the Blue Mountains pumped the only organ she'd ever pump. A mother and a mob of wriggling kids sat in front: the little one yawned, stretched, put a hand on my leg, ran her fingers up it, turned around and smiled delightedly.

I managed to lie low until the collection, when I suddenly found myself staring into the puzzled, ugly mug of our local member of parliament. He was horrified to see me: his bottom lip quivered, as did his bottom. Gellie by name…

Blacks were obviously a rarity round here.

He recovered well, though, waved the collection plate at me. This is a turn-around, I thought: the MP asking the black woman for money. And I didn't have any to give him, a fact which gave me a perverse satisfaction.

Gellie strode back down the aisle, tipped the money into a bag, gave it a crisp shake: mission accomplished. I turned back to the altar, then heard an ominously familiar voice cut through the sombre atmosphere of the church.

‘Scuse me, mister…'

I looked around.

Danny Brambles. Christ, where did he spring from? I thought he was still out bush.

He was standing in the doorway looking like something that had crawled out of the Retention Dams: grubby, drunk, desperate. He was wearing a torn Demons footy jumper, black shorts, bare feet.

Gellie took him in—the staggering stance, the dazed expression—raised an eyebrow, curled a lip, moved away.

Danny wasn't giving up on that much money without a struggle.

‘Couldn't spare a couple of bucks, could ya mate?'

Gellie's sneer intensified, his pace quickened. His own face wasn't unblemished by the ravages of alcohol, but he had the wherewithal to do his drinking behind closed doors.

‘Please, mister…' Danny made the mistake of touching him on the elbow.

The politician whipped his arm away, his nostrils growing darker by the nanosecond. ‘Get your hands off me!'

Danny stopped, tilted his head to the left, blinked and ran his fingers through his hair. He cast an eye around the room and seemed for the first time to have an inkling of what he'd wandered into.

The congregation stared. The ladies rattled their beads and tutted, the menfolk glanced at each other and rolled their eyes, wondering how the hell you tackled a drunken coon at a Sunday morning service.

Father Dal Santo wasn't troubled by any such uncertainties. ‘You! Boy!' he bristled from the pulpit. ‘How dare you come here in such a condition?'

His stroppy little teeth reminded me of someone—or something: Stiffy, the not-so-dearly departed pest of Green Swamp.

Danny turned to him, ever so slowly, shot a look of bleary-eyed animosity in the priest's direction.

‘Condition?' The dreadlocks flashed.

‘This is the House of God!'

‘Of God?' The words were mostly hisses and whispers in his mouth. ‘Oh, the pastor tell us about your god. He's a hard god, that one. Hit us with sickness and…burn us. Dynamite Christ, that one.'

‘Why you little devil!'

‘Devil? Ah, your devil or god depend which way the light shine.'

Danny took a step to the left, then stumbled, leaned against a pew, sank slowly to the floor.

He sat with his back to the seat, screwed up his face, stared at the ceiling like he expected it to fall in on top of him.

An old head with young hair popped out of the sacristy. ‘I've called the police—they're on the way.'

‘Ah, jeez.' I rose from my seat, my earlier nervousness forgotten. ‘I wish you hadn't done that.'

I could imagine the mess the bloody cops would make of this. The bloke would have been better off calling the Indian nuns—at least they were nice: they gave you chicken soup and red dresses. All the cops gave you was grief.

‘Danny…' I moved down the aisle.

He noticed me for the first time, startled. ‘Em'ly Tempest? You for real?'

‘Far as I can tell.'

‘Heard you was in hospital.'

‘Not now.'

‘Where you come from?'

‘Just passing by, Danny. Thought you might need a hand.'

His brow twisted. ‘You still in the police?'

‘Not any more.'

‘Tha's good. More better you go back out to Moonlight. Safer there. Out west my country they kill you if you open your mouth.'

His eyes drifted, lit upon one of the Stations of the Cross: Christ and the Crown of Thorns. He stared at the scene, horrified. The drawn, tormented face, the drops of blood, the desperate eyes.

He turned back to me. His face was a contorted mirror of the one on the wall.

‘Fire out there, Em, running underground, through the air, like knives flashin. Green fire, burns your blood, kills you slow and hard. You can hear it if you listen.'

He was almost weeping. I'd never seen him quite this disturbed before. He wasn't just drunk; it was much more than that. He was having some sort of psychotic episode—the DTs, I assumed, or the drugs or both. It was as if the blood had drained from his body, the energy from his muscles. His anxiety about noises had exploded into full-blown paranoia.

The nerves, I thought, those twisted, frayed circuits of the brain: they're a bloody minefield. And when you put a foot wrong, by god, they take a toll. He'd always been a delicate boy, but he'd gone from anxious to barking mad in the space of a few days.

When had I last laid eyes on him? When we said goodbye at the roadhouse, a couple of weeks ago. What the hell had happened between then and now? He was looking worse than me, and I'd been battered, raped and damn near totalled by a landslide.

I scanned the room, desperate to get him out of there before the cops arrived. I had visions of him belting somebody, being dragged off to jail, subjected to god knows what horrors.

As if in answer to my prayers, somebody from the congregation stepped forward.

‘Can I help?'

It was the man who'd been in church before the service. Mr Pink-striped Suburbia. But I felt bad about the mockery: straight as a die the bloke might have been, but he was the only one there sensitive enough to realise that Danny was more in need of compassion than coppers.

‘Sure as hell hope so.'

‘Maybe we should take him home—if he's got one?'

‘He has. You got a car?'

He looked like I was asking if he had a head. ‘Of course.'

‘That'd be wonderful. He really doesn't want to get tangled up with the law right now; he's in enough trouble already.'

He came up beside me, moving with a cautious gait and a diplomatic smile. ‘He seemed to think you were the law.'

‘Used to be an Aboriginal Police Officer. Not any more. Where you parked?'

‘Just outside.'

I knelt next to the crumpled boy. ‘Danny, listen to me…'

His eyelids fluttered. ‘What's happening, Em?'

‘We're taking you home, okay? Back to Bandy's.'

He gazed up at me, sloppy-eyed, his breath deep-fried in kerosene. But he let us help him to his feet.

Mr Suburbia and I took an elbow each. We guided the boy into a metal-blue Range Rover, and I joined him in the back seat.

As we were reversing out, I spotted the police van zipping down the road, the uber-simpatico Harley at the wheel. Danny noticed it as well, stirred restlessly.

‘Settle down,' I told him. ‘There's nobody going to hurt you.'

‘But they do. All of us. I read it in the paper.'

‘What did it say?'

‘Oh Emily, you have to be careful—they kill you if you know, cut your fuckin throat.' I glanced at our driver: not the sort of language he would have expected to hear when he set out for church that morning, but he seemed to be taking it in his stride. ‘They killin our country…'

‘Who is?'

A glazed stare, a down-turned mouth. ‘I don't know.'

‘How are they killing it?'

‘Radio waves,' he mumbled, almost inaudible.

‘
Radio
waves?' Jesus, he was a mess.

‘Something like that,' he rasped. ‘They're everywhere.'

‘Radio waves? Well they are, but they don't do much harm as far as I know. Who told you about them?'

‘I read it in the paper.'

‘Which paper?'

‘Oh, I dunno—some whitefeller paper.' That narrowed it down. He seemed lost in the echo of his own reflection in the window. ‘These whitefellers and their paper: they got so many—newspaper, dunny paper, money, maps an cigarettes.' He giggled; no humour in it. ‘Light em up, curl around the edges and you burn.'

He caught sight of the crucifix mounted on the church roof, stared at it, puzzled. ‘Em'ly?' he asked.

‘Yes, Danny?'

‘These kartiya—what for they gotta tear the shade apart? Them and their machine god?'

‘Wish I knew.'

‘The pastor tell us he come from the desert, this God.' His gaze turned to the west; he shuddered. ‘I'm thinking he bring it along with him.'

I tapped the driver's seat. ‘Let's go.'

Our good samaritan glanced back at us, concern and curiosity fighting for possession of his face. He was obviously a decent enough guy but, like a lot of whitefellers at the upper end of the food chain, it was a safe bet he spent his life virtually quarantined from the Aboriginal people he lived among.

I knew the type. You could go from the air-conditioned office to the exclusive club, then back to the cyclone-wired house and the big dog and barely notice a blackfeller all the while, except to step over the odd one in the gutter.

‘Where to?'

‘Bleaker Street.'

‘Down past the government offices?'

‘You got it.'