I don't know whether or not Jimmy knew what a harem was, but he sure as hell knew about poddy-dodging - the rustling of young, unbranded stock - and he just about pissed himself laughing.
'Ah, come on, h'Em'ly,' he wheezed, slapping a knee, 'you little bit long in the tooth for poddy now!'
'Fuck off! I'm twenty-six. How old are you?'
This stumped him. He stared into the air for a moment, tilted his head, scratched his whiskers and said, 'Mmmm, might be somethin…'
'Oh something!' I growled, but I was beginning to see how Hazel had managed to remain a member of this eccentric outfit for so many years.
We sat by the fire, Jimmy and I chiacking each other while Maggie cooked up the grub - or grubs, witchetty for the most part. Others I wished were. Hazel was carving a wooden snake, and I noticed several other craft pieces around the shack: a wire- burnt coolamon, a quartz crystal on a length of string and a wind-chime dangling from the veranda. The latter, on closer inspection, turned out to be more sculpture than wind-chime, a ring of banded stones suspended from a crystal and held together with a length of string.
Weird, I thought. But typical Hazel. It brought to mind some of the objects she'd used to decorate her space when we were kids: feathers, fossils and thunder eggs, insects suspended in gum, globs of honey and blobs of spinifex wax. Once she brought in a bush potato which was a perfect replica of an erect dick, complete with balls, and we watched in fascination over the next few days as detumescence set in.
I was sitting by the fire chatting with Hazel and Maggie and chewing on a porcupine bone when I heard a motor approaching. Something big and beefy. A red Fioo came rumbling down the track. It pulled up at the shack and something else big and beefy climbed out of the driver's seat.
'Hurl Mars,' Maggie whispered, suddenly uncomfortable. She scuttled into the shack.
Hurl Mars?
Mars Attacks
Whatever it was, it was dressed, surprisingly, in black. From the tip of the toe to the top of the broad-brimmed hat. It looked like Johnny Cash heading for a funeral - possibly his own.
Our visitor looked about distastefully, sniffed the air.
'H'owner for Carbine,' Jimmy explained.
Ah yes. Earl Marsh, from the neighbouring Carbine Creek Station. Although I hadn't met him yet, I had met some of his employees in the White Dog, and I knew him by reputation.
Carbine was one of the oldest properties in the region, but Marsh himself was something of a ring-in, having snuck in from Queensland a few years before. Jack had told me a bit about him. The whitefeller station owners hated land claims, and Marsh had been one of the biggest noises in his opposition to the Moonlight one. He'd done more than shoot off his mouth: he'd hunted Aboriginal Lands Council anthropologists off his property with a shotgun, bulldozed sacred sites, initiated a press campaign to show that those he termed the 'real owners' - a couple of old blackfellers who worked for him - weren't interested in getting the land back.
From the look of him now - dark shades on a red, blistered face, a mess of tatts on his forearms, a black cigar and a massive, buckle- smothering gut - he hadn't come to offer his condolences for our recent loss. He rumbled up and towered over us. He had squat legs, broad shoulders and the ubiquitous elastic-sided riding boots. He would have killed any horse he tried to sit on, but that was not so unusual for your latter-day stockman, who was more likely to be mounted on a thoroughbred four wheel drive than a horse.
'Hello, old man,' he barked, us women apparently invisible.
'Good afternoon, Mr Mars,' chirped Jimmy.
'We got a problem,' Marsh announced, pleasantries out of the way. He had a voice like Darth Vader's big brother. Quite a feat, considering that he spoke without moving his jaw. The Territory, I reflected, must be a hell of a place for lip-readers.
'Them bloody mongrels of yours,' he continued, nodding at Jimmy's pack of canine lassitude. 'They been attackin me cattle.'
It's his neck, I decided. That's what makes this guy such a weird-looking dude. He hasn't got one: his head just erupts out of his shoulders, like an enormous blood blister.
Jimmy scratched his pants in contemplation, sucked through sparse black teeth. 'Aaaiiyy,' he murmured. 'Reckon they must be quiet dog.' He waved an arm at the dogs by way of explanation, but he was looking worried. You had to sympathise with Jimmy when it came to dogs: the poor old bastard was down to his last half a dozen.
'I seen the evidence, old man,' the visitor insisted. 'Seen the evidence with my own eyes. You people, you let your animals run wild. Wild!' he repeated, warming to his theme. 'I just come down from the North Block. Three separate attacks, there's been. Poddies, mainly. Half a dozen savaged, rest of em spooked as hell.'
'North Block, eh…?' Jimmy crooned sympathetically.
'Can't say I didn't warn you,' Marsh growled. 'What we got here is a situation which needs, like… resolution.' He glanced at the rifle mounted in the cabin of his Fioo.
'Bullshit!' I interjected. 'What we got here is a situation which needs, like, clarification.' Dogs had been shot round here before, and I didn't feel like watching it happen again. I climbed to my feet and pointed a porcupine leg at the dogs. 'Look at them, for Christ's sake! Cattle? They'd have trouble attacking a mixoed rabbit.'
The dogs played their part beautifully, huddling in the distance like a flock of new-mown sheep. All except for old Leather, the attack dog, who couldn't help himself and was curling an upper lip in a manner most un-sheeplike.
Marsh swivelled his shades in my direction. After a long interval the words 'Who're you?' forced their way through his clenched teeth.
'I'm your worst nightmare, Mr Marsh.'
'My what?'
'A Moonlight woman with a law degree.'
He looked like the long-drop dunny in the men's camp had just been shoved up his left nostril.
'Lawyer, eh?' His shook his head, then said it again, his lips skirting round the word as if it were something dredged out of the aforementioned dunny.
I almost smiled. The only thing they hate more than blackfellers out here is lawyers. The prospect of a black lawyer must have been causing a meltdown somewhere in among the neurons. And it wasn't that far from the truth; one of my non-degrees was in law, and I figured I should be able to get a Lands Council lawyer to back up whatever bullshit I improvised now.
'Who you workin for?' he asked warily.
'I'm working for Moonlight, and what do you mean "North Block"? If you're talking north of Carbine we never go out there, and if you're talking north of Moonlight, it's not your land.'
Hazel put a hand on mine and mouthed the words, 'Emily, hush!'
Marsh studied me for a moment, then turned to Jimmy Lively. 'Old man, I thought we had an agreement. Who is this nosey little bitch?'
An agreement?
Jimmy, never much of a fighter unless his opponent was edible, scuffed the ground uncomfortably. 'You remember that ol mechanic longa Moonlight, back in Tim Buchanan time? Motor Jack? This h'Emily, daughter for im now.'
Marsh sniffed the air. 'Never heard of im, nor his daughter.'
Must have been before you got through the rabbit fence, as Jack used to say about these Queensland interlopers. I spat a bit of porcupine gristle onto the ground, licked my fingers. 'So what's this agreement?'
'What?'
'You said you had an agreement.'
'I told old Jungle Jim ere when I come across him down the Mosquito last week, I got a signed agreement with the owner to run cattle on the North Quarter.'
'Owner?' Christ, I was thinking, with a sinking feeling in my chest and Kenny Trigger's scuttlebutt surfacing in my memory, this bloke doesn't fuck about. Was he part of the distinguished company who'd been chauffeuring Freddy Ah Fong round town? 'What owner?'
'Wait ere,' he rumbled.
He lurched back to the F100, then returned with a grubby document which, on closer inspection, turned out to be a ninety-nine year lease on the north quarter of Moonlight Downs.
Hazel read it as I did, and looked puzzled. Jimmy didn't seem too perturbed; he just sat there, nodding politely and chewing his tobacco. Not that this surprised me; for one thing, about the only thing on the paper he could read was Freddy's X. For another, you could have told Jimmy his arse was on fire and he would have continued to sit there nodding politely and chewing his tobacco. He was a nodding and chewing sort of guy.
I wasn't in such an accommodating mood. 'Enjoy your paddock while you can, Mister Mars.'
'Marsh!'
'Mr Marsh. You don't seriously expect this bullshit to stand up in court, do you? You think you're dealing with a pack of fucking savages? The ownership of Moonlight Downs is vested in a trust, of which Freddy is merely a member - a senior member, maybe, but anything as significant as this needs to be ratified by the entire membership. Adequate compensation needs to be paid, terms and conditions agreed upon. Next time you see me, Mr Marsh, I'll be packing an injunction. In the meantime, I'd suggest you get packing yourself.'
'I got an agreement…'
I gave him back his folder. 'What you've got, Mr Marsh, is an X on a piece of paper.' I sat back down, gathered together the wherewithal for a smoke, fidgeted in my pockets for a light. 'You'll be hearing from us.'
He gave me a long, slow stare.
'What'd you say your name was?'
'Emily Tempest.'
He folded his arms, squared his legs, not talking. Not with his mouth, at any rate, but his Ray-bans suddenly looked like ray- guns. He swung his overgrown head round and stormed back to the Fioo. I noticed Winnie's kids looking out through the hessian door, bug-eyed and slack-jawed.
As Marsh opened the car door old Leather, seeing his chance, galloped out and bit him on his broad behind.
The Carbine man didn't miss a beat. As he heaved his carcass into the cabin he swung down, swiftly and accurately, with the tyre lever that had materialised in his big right fist. We could hear the skull crack from twenty feet away. The animal collapsed in a heap of teeth and skin.
The kids shot back into the shack.
'That's one less to worry about,' Marsh grunted. He drove off without a backward glance.
We sat there chewing his dust, all of us a little shell-shocked. Maggie appeared, looking about as sprightly as the dog.
Eventually Jimmy shuffled over to the dead animal, put a hand on its neck and gave it a last massage. 'Ah shit!' he crooned mournfully, 'me best fuckin dog.'
Hazel nestled into my side, looking for comfort. She hadn't said much, but when she put her hand in mine I could feel the pulse racing. We watched as Jangala pottered around for a shovel, picked up Leather and carried him into the scrub.
'Emmy?' she said.
'Uh-huh?' I answered, vaguely, my mind on other things.
'Can we get outta here for a while?'
I looked at her. 'Where do you want to go?'
'Maybe out the old gaolhouse?'
Which did surprise me, so much so that I was momentarily distracted from the question that had been bobbing around my head from the moment I spotted Marsh's dodgy contract.
Which was, what had inspired him to get it signed the day before Lincoln died?
In the Gaolhouse Now
As I drove through the late-afternoon scrub I spent much of my time weaving around termite mounds and fallen logs, but overall the track was in much better nick than I'd expected it to be.
'Bit easier than the first time we come out here, Haze?'
'Yuwayi.'
She was sitting beside me, still carving her little snake, but tense, I could tell. I caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror, and saw moisture in her eyes.
I gave her hand a squeeze, and she smiled briefly.
As we cruised through the mulga the sense of anticipation awoke old memories. A scene came rolling across my mind like something out of an old movie, the kind of film somebody should make about the Territory - full of subtle encounters and tender close-ups - but which only ever seem to emerge from other people's deserts.
How old had I been, the first time we came across the gaol? Thirteen? Maybe fourteen. Early on in the year of my disgrace. I'd been out riding with Hazel. We'd scrounged a couple of stock horses off Jack, and were laughing and galloping through the scrub, as was our wont. We were about an hour's ride north of the homestead. I remember I pulled up to watch her race past: she rode beautifully, rode as if she were floating over the saddle, a talent she'd inherited from her father. We were from different worlds, Hazel and I - hers black and mine a sort of… off-white, but the borders of each had long dissolved and we lived our lives in the middle. She was my best friend, my first love.
The horse shied, and as I twisted in the saddle I spotted something through the trees at the foot of a nearby hill.
A tin roof.
'Hang on, Hazel!' I yelled. 'What's that?'
She pulled up, gasping - not from fatigue, though we'd been riding for hours, but from exhilaration. She looked back at me, wild-eyed and wet with sweat, the tip of her tongue flashing through crooked teeth.
'What's what?'
But she followed my line of sight and looked wary.
'Kantalkuyu,' she said cautiously. 'Ol police station. Fore kurlu- patu move away to Jupiter Well.'
It's no coincidence that the Warlpuju word for cop also means 'cheeky', which, in Aboriginal English, is to say 'brutal'. An oblique comment upon the force's policing practices in the early days. Some of the later ones too.
I pulled my horse round. 'Gonna give it a geek?'
Her voice became smoky, her brow as rippled as the earth over which we were riding. 'We don't go there, Em. Dangerous place nearby. Man's place. Woman not allowed.'
'Oh.' I knew what that meant. But… 'Just close, though, right? Not actually there, eh Haze? C'mon, I really wanner look at it. Old cop shop, what else is there like that round here? We could just go for a quick squizz…'
I began to move away, but she pulled me up. 'Aaiiiyy… Just roundabout the building then. No more. Up in the hills behind, there's a place. Mebbe cave. Janapularti. Stay away from there. Okay?'
'Okay.' I began to move off, but she wouldn't let me go. She grabbed hold of my reins and frowned at me.
'More than okay, Emily. I know you, you gotta promise!'
'Yes Hazel.' I looked her in the eyes. 'Cave in the hills. Janapularti. We won't go there, I promise.'
I cantered off, and she followed - reluctantly at first, but by the time we reached the ant-bed building she was beside me, as curious as I was. We reined in our horses, dismounted and stood in front of the building. There was a dirty great padlock on the front door and bars on the windows, but round the back, where the roof had lifted slightly, the crumbling masonry gave us an easy entrance.
We crawled through the wall and entered a dingy room shot through with bolts of light. One of them hit a calendar on the opposite wall: 1942.
That explained the station's hasty abandonment. Able-bodied men had other things on their mind that year. Debris from its former life was scattered about the building: charred utensils in the fireplace, green bottles, a broken table, a hand-made broom.
We made our way into an adjoining room, this one fitted out with black steel bars: the cell. I touched a metal bunk, then felt an importunate hand upon my sleeve.
'Emily, look!' Her eyes were wide open.
Up against the opposite wall, half-submerged in shadow and dirt, was a six-foot high bookcase.
Full of books.
I ran a hand across the leather spines, deciphered a few titles. 'Robinson Crusoe,' I read. 'Poetical Works of Tennyson. Persuasion… The Ruby-something of Omar someone… Kenil- worth. Lavengro.'
The names meant nothing to
us. And yet…
We'd grown up on writing, Hazel and I. Our friendship had been suckled on the written word. She'd been five or so when Jack taught us to read: he said that having her company was the only way he could rope me into staying still for long enough. Once we had the basics, we devoured every scrap of writing on the place: newspapers and magazines, mail-order catalogues, missionary texts, National Geographies, Jack's geology books, the sepia- coloured Australiana he read from time to time, a battered Henry Lawson. We enjoyed them all: they were like radio signals from a distant planet.
But the collection in front of us was something else. We both felt it.
They were the planet itself.
I pulled out a fat red volume and blew away the dust. The book was worn, torn, water-marked, mottled with wasps' nests and spider webs - but readable. We sat on a bunk by the window, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, arms around each other's waists, and read from where it fell open:
…You have seen Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears
Were like a better way: those happy smilets,
That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.
Hazel and I looked at each other, astounded. I didn't know what she made of it, but to me it seemed that the words floated up from the page and hovered in the air, before breaking up and drifting away in a trail of golden particles.
The little ant-bed gaolhouse was our hideaway that summer, our enchanted cubby-house, our garden of words, our refuge from the rain-battered or sun-blasted afternoons.
They were troubled times on Moonlight Downs. Tim Buchanan was in the Alice Springs Hospital, from which he would emerge only for his own funeral. The banks, who Jack reckoned had put him there, were looking to recover what they were owed. A succession of hard-nosed bastards came poking round the station, measuring rust and dust, going through the chaotic books, looking at us like buyers at a slave auction. It wasn't that long ago I that a station's niggers were listed as assets, like so many head of cattle or miles of fencing.
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