All Our Shimmering Skies

by Trent Dalton

  The old man pats Sam’s shoulder and that’s all that’s required to make the young man with the gun step back respectfully.

  Longcoat Bob runs his deep and watery and grey eyes over the scene. The girl nursing the foreigner on the ground. The duffel bag filled with nuggets. The tall man with the knife in his hand.

  He points at the duffel bag. ‘Them rocks,’ he says. And he speaks softly but so clearly that all the heads in the clearing, including Molly’s, turn towards him. ‘No good.’

  ‘I found those rocks myself,’ Aubrey Hook says. ‘I see no claims on them. They are mine to take as I please.’

  Longcoat Bob studies the tall man’s face. Looks deep into those black eyes. Deep into that tired shadow. ‘Then you must carry all you own,’ he says. And he holds an open palm towards the bridge of eucalypt trunks stretching across the raging river. ‘Go.’

  Aubrey Hook is temporarily stunned by the word. He said go, he tells himself. Walk out of here. Take your gold and leave. Go back to Darwin and build your mansion by the sea. Go back to Darwin and smile down on every last publican who kicked you out of a bar. Smile down on every last woman who rejected your advances. Smile down on every last bank manager and stone supplier and tool salesman who said your money was no good. Smile down on the woman who was meant to love you, but didn’t. Go, he said.

  Aubrey slips the paring knife into the back of his belt. He slowly moves across to his shot hat and takes his time to place it back upon his head. Then he walks over to the duffel bag filled with raw and heavy gold. He squats and braces his back and his veins pulse beneath his sweaty skin as he strains to lift the bag over his shoulder. When the bag is up, he turns on his heels and passes Molly without a single glance in her direction on his way to the bridge, the only exit from the clearing that is open to him.

  At the foot of the bridge he is stopped by the voice of Longcoat Bob.

  ‘You must carry all you own,’ the old man says. ‘But you must own all you carry.’

  Aubrey stares into the old man’s eyes. And he is cold now, even on a day as humid as this one.

  Movement now behind Longcoat Bob. Sam’s friends start talking in their own language to three Aboriginal women who have emerged from the path between the two rock walls. One of them is old, with hair as grey as Longcoat Bob’s, and this woman carries the baby boy who fell from the sky. Then Molly Hook’s eyes find another woman emerging from the pathway. A blonde who was born for moving pictures. Who wears an emerald dress. Has curls like a crashed wave falling across her ear.

  ‘Greta!’ Molly hollers because she can’t help herself. There is relief in that name. There is love in it even more.

  But Greta does not turn to Molly Hook because she is transfixed by the sight of Aubrey. They stare silently at each other for too long. Molly wants him to go. Just go. Stop staring at him, she thinks. He doesn’t deserve anything from you, Greta. He doesn’t deserve a single look from those silver screen eyes. Look away from him, Greta. Just look away and he’ll go.

  But she does not shift her gaze. She doesn’t even blink. And the shadow man is allowed to speak, though he only says a single word. ‘We …’ he says. And then he stops. He says no more. He smiles. And he drops his head and turns to cross the bridge.

  Aubrey steps gingerly onto three slender eucalypt trunks made black and slimy by the spray from the rapids below. Boot after boot after boot. The bridge bends under the weight of the gold on his shoulder and Molly watches him pause. He puts another foot forward and the bridge still bends, but it holds his weight and the gold’s weight, too. Only six or seven more yards to the end of the bridge, he thinks. There are butterflies in his stomach and he can feel the glowing from the gold inside the duffel bag. The glorious glowing. The only thing he has ever needed.

  Boot after boot after boot. Almost at the middle now and almost home to Darwin and almost home to that life with the gold, that life lived inside the glowing. Another step and the bridge bends alarmingly. A crack from the wood beneath him, so loud that everyone can hear it over the roar of the raging rapids. Aubrey takes a single cautious step backwards, but then the wood beneath him cracks again and the bridge drops lower and the gravedigger freezes.

  He brings the duffel bag down to his chest, slowly retrieves a large nugget of gold and drops it into the water to lighten his load. He watches the glow fade in the water and his heart aches to see it disappear like that and the loss fills him with fury and the fury fills him with fearlessness and he takes another step forward across the bridge and the bridge does not crack but it cracks on his next step and it drops closer to the river, so he takes another nugget from the bag and drops it in the water and it sinks quickly to the river floor. But this does not stop the bridge from bending further and it is clearly close to its breaking point now and Aubrey is forced by instinct to turn around and run back towards the safety of the clearing’s rocky ground in the direction of the heart stone cave where the gravedigger girl stands up like a stone pillar and watches his pitiful dilemma from the safety of a hard, rocky earth. But as he does so the tree emits one final, loud, merciless crack. Aubrey Hook stops and stands upright like a figure made of stone. Motionless.

  And to Molly’s eyes even the river turns to stone. The sky above him. The black wattle trees surrounding him. The birds in the air. Everything still. No more movement but for the black eyes of the shadow man in the black wide-brimmed hat turning in their sockets to find the girl who brought him here. The girl who put him on this breaking bridge. And Molly tries to understand the look upon his face but she cannot understand it because it is a look she has not yet read upon the face of Aubrey Hook, a white-faced look so far from satisfaction.

  ‘Molly …’ he pleads. And he wants to reach out for her because he wants the girl to save him. But he can’t reach for anything with such a heavy bag of gold in his arms.

  And the bridge gives up. It splits in half and Aubrey Hook is just two yards from its end when he falls into the rapids and his eyes are still open underwater as the river thrashes him back and forth and upside down, and the last thing he sees before the darkness is the glowing of his gold nuggets being flung from the open duffel bag that he refuses to let go of. The glowing. The glorious glowing.

  *

  ‘Yukio!’ Greta calls. She rushes to the pilot, kneels by his side. She’s already in tears before she sees the extent of his wounds.

  Molly sees those tears and she is reminded of her own lack of them. Cry, Molly, cry. Cry from the place where it hurts. From the place where it has always hurt. But she can’t even cry for a dying friend, and she knows who to blame for this and she turns to Longcoat Bob.

  ‘This is all your fault!’ she screams. ‘He’s dying.’

  Longcoat Bob remains still, running his eyes over the Japanese pilot. No expression.

  Molly runs to him. ‘It’s your fault we’re here,’ she says. And she pulls on Longcoat Bob’s hand. ‘You’ve gotta save him now. Only you can save him now.’

  *

  Lying flat on the sandstone rock, Yukio Miki can see the grey sky and he can see the face of Greta Maze. She’s weeping.

  ‘Stay, Yukio!’ she wails. ‘You hear me. You stay right here.’

  She’s wiping blood from his lips. She’s placing her hand against his wound.

  He reaches his hand to her. His trembling hand. Only strength enough for this. His fingers slide across her cheek. His fingers move across her eyelashes.

  Her face moving closer to his now. The warmth of her. She is a light in the grey sky. She is sun. She is fire. Her cheek against his now. So close he can feel the tears running from her eyes.

  ‘Stay,’ she whispers.

  Her lips moving across his face. Those soft lips he would stay for. Those lips he would fight death for. Yet her lips against his will be his end. Because he can die now with her kiss.

  *

  Molly pulling, pulling, pulling on Longcoat Bob’s arm, trying to drag the sorcerer towards Yukio Miki. But the old ma
n does not move.

  ‘Use your magic, Longcoat Bob,’ she bellows. ‘Use your magic on him.’

  Longcoat Bob stands firm. His face puzzled. His face tender. ‘Ssssshhhh,’ he says to the girl.

  Then a word from the mouth of Yukio Miki. ‘Molly.’

  She turns.

  ‘Molly … Hook.’

  Molly runs back to the pilot, kneels by his side. ‘I’m sorry, Yukio,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t change anything. I thought I could change it all. I didn’t change a thing.’

  Yukio grips the girl’s hand. He lifts his head as high up as he can. ‘Molly … Hook … change … everything,’ he whispers. Then he lets his head fall back on the hard sandstone and his eyes are wide when he looks to the sky, when he looks to High Heaven, when he looks towards Nara.

  ‘Yukio leave now, Molly Hook,’ he says, smiling. Something wondrous in his eyes. The light in them. ‘Yukio … shoot through.’

  And his eyes do not close but they do not move either.

  They dance for the stranger from Japan. They believe her when she says he fell from the sky to save her. They believe her when she says he was good.

  Sam Greenway and the other male members of his family discussed the deeds of the foreign fighter pilot who took a bullet for Greta Maze and saved the life of the gravedigger girl. Sam said the girl meant a great deal to him and Sam asked if they could dance for the stranger in a circle of earth bordered by a ring of huts made of paperbark and corrugated iron and ironwood branches, a small and improvised camp in the deep country, two miles north of the gold cave with the heart of stone and the river that swallowed up Aubrey Hook.

  Sam and his family dancing for the fighter pilot who rests with his eyelids closed on a rectangular stack of branches, while four men carefully wrap his body in sheets of paperbark. A dance for the dead. A dance that lasts for hours, a farewell that lasts so long that Molly whispers to Sam on the outskirts of the ceremonial circle that Yukio Miki probably wouldn’t mind if all the boys wanted to stop and have a drink of water.

  ‘These boys can go for days, Mol’,’ Sam says. ‘Can you feel it, Mol’?’

  ‘Feel what?’

  ‘Ol’ mate,’ Sam smiles, nodding at Yukio’s body. ‘He’s going back.’

  ‘Back where?’

  ‘Back to where it all began, Mol’.’ And Sam looks to the sky and Molly follows his eyes up to it. Sam’s dancing friends in the ceremonial circle look to the sky too and spread their arms wide.

  ‘He’s going back to get amongst it again, Mol’,’ Sam says.

  ‘To get amongst what?’ Molly asks.

  ‘Everything, Molly!’ Sam says, with the confident smile of a matinee idol by way of Mataranka. ‘Everything!’

  *

  They stay for seven days. Molly and Greta share a hut and sleep side by side on soft beds of stuffed paperbark tied up with reeds. Young women in the camp bring them bowls of plums and tomatoes and plates of fresh fish and crocodile and scrubfowl cooked so well on a coal fire that Molly says she never wants to go back to Darwin.

  Molly tells Sam she needs to speak with Longcoat Bob. Sam says Longcoat Bob wants to talk to Molly, but Longcoat Bob is not around. Sam says Molly Hook must be patient. Sam says Molly Hook must slow down. Sam says she runs so fast towards all the answers that she runs right past every one of them.

  Sam says Molly must think on her friend Yukio. He says she must be there now for her friend Greta, who keeps weeping for the stranger from Japan.

  Molly and Greta wake in their sleep. In the darkness with their eyes closed but their minds open, they try to make sense of their journey into the deep country.

  ‘You awake?’ Molly asks in the darkness.

  ‘I am now.’

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  Greta says nothing.

  ‘I keep thinking about Yukio.’

  More silence from Greta.

  ‘Keep thinking about his family. They’ll never get to know how he died. Maybe I could go to Japan and tell them about what he done. I could tell them how he saved your life.’

  But Greta remains silent and Molly knows she’s saying nothing because she’s crying.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Molly.

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘I keep talkin’ about him.’

  ‘I reckon he’s worth talkin’ about, Mol’.’

  Molly turns to her side and rests her head on her palm and a propped-up elbow.

  ‘Why did you come with me, Greta?’

  Greta thinks on this for a moment.

  ‘I like gold as much as anyone,’ she says.

  ‘Then why didn’t you take any from that cave?’

  There’s a long silence in the hut. Greta says nothing.

  ‘I reckon just one of those nuggets would have set you up good,’ Molly says. ‘And what do you have now? Nuthin’.’

  More silence.

  Greta adopts her thickest Australian public bar accent. ‘Not a brass raaaazzooo,’ she says.

  Molly chuckles. Then more silence. Then more fear. More loneliness. More confusion. More gravedigger girl. ‘I sure made a mess of things, didn’t I, Greta?’

  Greta turns on her side to face Molly, even if she can’t see her face in the darkness.

  ‘You didn’t make the mess, kid,’ Greta says. ‘You just dived right into it.’

  ‘I sure did, didn’t I?’

  Molly allows herself another chuckle. Greta laughs with her. And their chuckles turn into belly laughs and it feels good to laugh because it all feels so much like a dream and a nightmare that they survived, and laughter might be the only thing they have left in their pockets between them.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, kid,’ Greta says, turning onto her back again to return to sleep. ‘I’ve had worse things than nuthin’.’

  *

  On the third day, the female elders in the camp visit the hut and they bring with them the baby who fell from the sky. They place him in Greta’s arms and she weeps when she holds him. But they are good tears and the elders weep with her because they know the child for what he is. A gift. A gift they thought they had lost. Then he was found by the beautiful actress in the emerald dress, who they are sure does not belong in the deep country. The female elders have spoken at length on this conundrum and they have settled on the notion that the actress must belong in the wild because she survived it, she made it this far and she made it with a miracle in her arms. And she was so reluctant to part with that miracle, even though she knew she had to, that the female elders were left in no doubt that the woman in the emerald dress was as radiant on the inside as she was on the outside.

  Sam visits the hut to say there is a sacred cave deep in the scrub where he and his friends will carry the body of Yukio Miki. Inside that sacred cave, Yukio’s body will slowly disintegrate and when it does his friends will respectfully gather his bones and place them inside a large and sacred hollow log where they will be left alone out of respect by both human and animal.

  But Molly asks if she can bury Yukio Miki the only way she knows how. With a shovel and a pair of boots. So Sam and a friend carry Yukio’s body on a stretcher made of branches deep into the scrub and they place him down in a clearing of rich and soft chocolate-brown soil beside a sprawling and majestic banyan tree with spreading limbs that look to Molly like the snakes that wriggled out of Medusa’s head in the world of stories. And she figures that’s okay because that’s the world that Yukio belongs to now. The world of stories.

  Molly and Greta dig his grave together. Foot by foot. Resting every half hour to drink from their water bag. The sun is falling when they’ve finished filling the hole in. Molly stands in the orange light at the foot of the grave. She holds the pilot’s family sword. ‘Can I say somethin’ for him?’ she asks Greta.

  The actress nods silently.

  Molly holds the sword in both hands. ‘Hi, Yukio,’ she says. ‘You probably won’t even be able to understand everything I’m saying, but I just wanted
to say thanks for saving us. I’ve never had many friends. Before I met you and Greta the only friend I had outside of Sam was a shovel. I guess that sounds kinda sad, but the only sad thing about that is that I didn’t get to be friends with you for longer. And I just wanted to tell you that I’m gonna keep your sword, Yukio. I was gonna bury it down there with you, but I just couldn’t do it. And then I remembered my old mate, Bert, and I thought if I could be friends with a shovel for so long then why can’t I be friends with a sword?’

  Molly turns to Greta, who is nodding with encouragement.

  ‘Anyway,’ Molly says. She leans down to her feet and picks up a burial cross she has fashioned out of two tree branches strung together with vine. ‘I didn’t have a chisel or any limestone blocks to carve you a proper epitaph,’ she says. ‘So I hope you won’t mind this.’ At the cross section of the branches she has hung a circle of rusted iron sheeting with a message carved into it. ‘I didn’t know what to write for your epitaph because I didn’t hear the whole story of your life,’ she says. ‘I had to summarise it a bit, sorry. But I think I got it right. It’s not very poetic but I hope it’s graceful.’

  Molly bangs the cross into the head of the grave and Greta places her arm over Molly’s shoulder.

  ‘Goodbye Yukio,’ Greta says.

  And the weary gravediggers head back into the scrub before they get themselves too lost in the dark, and the lemon light of the setting sun shines over Molly Hook’s sharpened-stone etchings hanging from the cross.

  HERE LIES YUKIO MIKI

  HE FELL FROM THE SKY

  HE DIED IN OUR ARMS

  HE WAS MIGOTO

  *

  On the sixth day, the wind comes. The sky turns to grey and then to green. The lightning returns and the roofs of the huts must be tied down with old rope and vine. Then the rain comes. And the elders turn their heads to the sky and it is decided that the group will leave the camp and move to the shelter of a spacious cave less than a mile to the east.