Moonlight Downs

by Adrian Hyland

  ‘So, Emily,’ he said, stretching out what there was of his skinny little legs to stretch, ‘much as I hate to sound like Jesus at the wedding—what’s it to be? Water or wine?’

  I looked at him blankly.

  ‘Most people come here for one or the other,’ he elaborated. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?’

  I held my glass up to the light, studied the refracted images that came swimming through its curves. I didn’t actually go for wine that much. To my uneducated palate it tasted like Deep Heat, but the artistry that had gone into its making somehow inspired trust in the artist.

  ‘It’s information I’m after, Bickie.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Information?’

  ‘Little while ago, you did some work for Earl Marsh.’

  The eyebrows stayed aloft.

  ‘Manager of Carbine,’ I prompted him.

  ‘Ye-es. I know who he is. He came out here with his friend. The government man. Mr…’

  ‘Massie. And you met Lincoln Flinders as well?’

  He hesitated. ‘Ye-es, we did.’

  ‘Would you mind telling me what the meeting was about, Bickie?’

  He’d pulled out a pipe, a beautiful briar, many times repaired. He fired it up, his cheeks full of wind and his eyes full of questions. The first of which was a cautious ‘Why do you wish to know?’

  I stood up and leaned against the railing. A mottled shadow shot across the open ground. I looked up as a flock of budgies came swerving in, tilted, wheeled and disappeared. Drawn to the water. I rolled a smoke, gazed up into the scarlet hills that brooded over us like an imminent storm. Who else had I seen gazing up into those hills of late?

  Lincoln, of course, the day we ran into Blakie. Who was still out there somewhere. I thought of him moving over those stony slopes, his nostrils flared, his eyes full of god-knows-what. Blakie the barking mad. Was I barking up the wrong tree myself?

  I told Bickie about my suspicions, told him how I’d hunted Blakie and hassled Marsh, and explained that I was keen to find out what he knew about any business, legal or otherwise, that might have been going on between the two stations.

  Bickie listened quietly, nodding from time to time, asking for the occasional point of clarification, contemplating the contents of his glass.

  ‘Mmmm…Lincoln, Lincoln…’ he said softly when I finished. ‘So you honestly think there could be a connection between Earl Marsh and his murder?’

  ‘I don’t know, Bickie. But if there is I’ll find it.’

  He studied me for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I think you will.’ He hacked off a chunk of bread, added a sliver of cheese and chewed them thoughtfully. ‘I hope—for my own sake, if nothing else—that you are wrong. I would hate to think that I had contributed in any way…’

  His voice trailed off into a reflective silence.

  ‘Did you know Lincoln well?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes, quite well, I would say. We had many dealings over the years. Perhaps a friendship of sorts. He was one of nature’s gentlemen. Not that Mr Marsh thought so: Mr Marsh is not, I fear, a gentleman of any description. There is, however, a certain… directness about the man. Frankly I would be surprised if he had done such a thing. The violence I could imagine, under certain circumstances, but the…treachery? The attempt, you are suggesting, to disguise it as a traditional killing? It does seem out of character.’

  ‘I must admit, I’ve had the same reservations myself. So what was your meeting about?’

  ‘Water, Emily,’ he sighed. ‘Like everything else in this country.’

  ‘Underground water?’

  ‘Of course. Carbine Creek, for all of its history and traditions, and its apparently rich pasture, is even worse off in that regard than most of its neighbours. Mr Marsh’s main aquifer will not last another ten years. He needs water badly. And I am confident that I found it for him, although I could not be certain of its quality until the drilling has taken place.’

  ‘Where’d you find it?’

  ‘Therein lay the problem. That was the reason Mr Massie offered his services. I believe he considers himself something of an expert in the field of Aboriginal affairs. Mr Marsh brought him out here to…negotiate.’

  ‘With Lincoln?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Christ, I thought, given that pair’s history, that suggested either an astonishing amount of ignorance on the part of Marsh or an astonishing amount of big-noting on that of the Little White Hope. Surely he realised Lincoln wouldn’t have had any time for the bastard who’d colluded in his people’s eviction from the station?

  ‘Where’d you find the water, Bickie?’

  ‘Close to the northern boundary. In considerable quantity, I’m sure. Though of what quality I could not say.’

  ‘Close? You mean on the Moonlight side?’

  ‘You must understand, Emily, the community was still struggling to establish itself. Particularly in the north. I doubt whether anyone other than Lincoln or Marsh had been out there for years.’ He sighed, trouble biting at his eyes. ‘Yes, the water was on Moonlight Downs. They planned to head on down to the camp, arrange a more formal meeting, but Lincoln came upon us unexpectedly.’

  ‘Let me guess. Marsh asked Lincoln if he could drill?’

  ‘Had he done so there would, I’m sure, have been no problem. But Mr Marsh is—how do you say it?—a man of the old school. He didn’t ask—he told. Massie was even worse: he acted as if the deal was already done.’

  ‘Yeah, I can imagine that. And I can imagine Lincoln’s response.’

  ‘He told them to go away. But not in those words. I suspected he was enjoying getting a little of his own back after so many years of the boot being on the whiteman’s foot.’

  If nothing else, I had at least learned the meaning of Lincoln’s remark to Massie about swapping a pram for water; I bet he’d enjoyed that as well.

  ‘What was Marsh’s state of mind while this was going on?’

  ‘Ah, Emily,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘topology I can sometimes read. Men’s minds, especially those of Outback Man, I cannot. Suffice to say that he was far from happy. I’m sure that with time, and a little diplomacy, the situation could have been resolved to the satisfaction of all. But time, alas, Lincoln did not have. Nor diplomacy, for that matter. The next thing I heard he was dead. Killed, it was said, by Blakie Japanangka.’

  ‘Do you know Blakie, too?’

  He shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘Does anyone know Blakie?’

  I let the response settle for a moment. ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘As far as I know, yes. Mr Marsh and Mr Massie dropped me back here and paid for my services. I have not seen either of them since.’

  ‘You don’t know whether or not Marsh actually drilled?’

  Bickie shrugged again. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve no idea. I could, perhaps, find out. I know all of the drillers around here.’

  ‘I’d appreciate that.’

  I finished my cheese, slipped the wine down into a rose bush. I was ready to roll. Bickie stood out on his veranda and watched me leave, thoughtfully scratching his chin.

  As I got out to shut the gate he called out, ‘Emily!’

  ‘Bickie?’

  ‘What I said before about you and water.’

  ‘The divining?’

  ‘You should try it again. You may be ready for it now.’

  A knockabout geology

  THE ROAD from the Stark River ran close to the north track, and I decided to make a diversion and see for myself the parcel of land around which Marsh’s schemes, whatever they were, apparently revolved.

  An hour’s drive brought me to Jalyukurru Hill, the nearest thing to a vantage point in the northern quarter. I’d never set foot on it before. I grabbed my field glasses and spent twenty minutes grunting my way to the summit.

  Once there I wedged myself between two massive slabs of stone, then relaxed, leaned back, let the sun wash over my face.

  I took
a swig from my water bottle, chewed a bit of jerky, then did what I automatically do when I encounter a patch of new country: studied the rock formations, subconsciously endeavouring to slot them into the geological map that’s forever flowing through my mind.

  Given a Wantiya mother, a knockabout miner father and a Warlpuju foster mob, it wasn’t exactly surprising that I often thought of geological formations as having lives of their own. I imagined them as enormous creatures, crawling through time, interacting with one another, forever changing, forever being changed. Sometimes, lying on a slab of quartz in the afternoon sun, I could feel a pulse that mightn’t have been my own.

  The west was a folded scarp of red granite and yellow sandstone under an iron-coloured duricrust. Two dark peaks, known locally as the Brothers Grim, towered over the slopes. The rock face there was irregular, rugged, pitted with fissures and frets and lightning scars, streaked with veins of hematite and limonite. Nothing unusual in any of that.

  Eastwards, more of the same. The ubiquitous granite, a warped sandstone wall, the odd beetling overhang, a coating of kaolin over the lower slopes. Some interesting shapes and formations but, geologically speaking, par for the course.

  Below me was another site in which I had more than a passing interest: the dozen or so acres of bizarrely shaped and weathered granite boulders that whitefellers called the Tom Bowlers and which Hazel knew as her dreaming site. Karlujurru. Diamond Dove. From this angle it looked like a ruined city. Some of the massive corestones seemed to be floating on air, so delicately were they balanced upon each other’s backs.

  Absorbed in the long-range perspective, I almost forgot about the close-up: the outcrop under my arse. Jalyukurru itself. Jack had cast a prospector’s eye over it years before, only to be stopped in his tracks by a minatory glance from Lincoln. I wondered, fleetingly, whether they’d mind my being here, whether I was breaking some taboo.

  The boulder upon which I sat was rough and grey, and, given that it was mottled with dents and cavities, surprisingly comfortable. I ran a hand over its fractured face. Hackly and jagged, the texture flaky, almost greasy, with a vitreous lustre. Anorthosite, I decided, with xenoliths of dunite. The coarse-grained gabbro jutting out at the base was something else, possibly norite.

  Anorthosite. Dunite. Norite. Was there a pattern there? Something told me there was. Hadn’t I seen something similar of late? Possibly, but I couldn’t remember where. Hazel’s wind-chime? No, the interesting bit there was labradorite, or so Jack had reckoned, and he was usually right.

  I put the rocks in my pocket and made a mental note to follow them up with Jack next time I saw him.

  I turned my attention to the country below. From the heights of Jalyukurru it assumed a different perspective. A dream perspective, perhaps, the echo of an inland sea. I felt like I was hovering over a red and yellow canvas painted by an old woman with sandy-blighted eyes. The wind guttered, the heat shimmered. Light shot away from an infinity of minerals. A brown hawk clawed air, floated over plains and pasture, went eye to eye with me.

  I raised my binoculars and scanned the horizon. A few cattle mooched about. Marsh’s, presumably. Bastard was taking his time responding to the court order. Why did that not surprise me? It was poor country this. Relentless, treeless, the wiregrass sporadic and as tough as tungsten, the gibbers the colour of arterial blood. Bare enough to flog a flea, as Lincoln would have said.

  Worth killing for? Shit, who could say? Especially if it had water. In Bluebush I’d seen fellers come close to killing each other over a carton of chips. Had Marsh, already enraged over the land claim, been tipped over the edge when Lincoln told him to sod off?

  I picked up the boundary fence with the glasses, followed it along until I came to a gate, on the other side of which lay the waving Mitchell grass plains of Carbine Creek. The transformation here was dramatic. Rich pasture, to be sure, but for how much longer? Strange to think that the station, one of the oldest in the Territory, was becoming a marginal prospect because of its dwindling water supply. How many other properties were going the same way? How much of our future were we slowly devouring?

  I followed the fence a little further to the south, then paused, came back and had a closer look at the gate. There was something unusual about it. I studied it carefully, wondering what it was that had snagged my subconscious. It wasn’t until I put the glasses down that I realised what it was: the set of wheel tracks ploughing through it. They were much deeper and wider than what you normally saw round here.

  I raised the glasses again.

  Marsh’s F100? Too deep. Cattle truck? Too wide. This was something really big.

  What the hell was that big out here? A road train? No, the country was too rough.

  A drilling rig, that’s what it would be. They could go just about anywhere these days. Earl Marsh, I knew, was looking for water. Had he already drilled? I followed the tracks. They came towards me, up into the lower slopes of Jalyukurru. I lost them for a moment on the outskirts of Karlujurru—you could lose an army in those crazy acres of scattered granite—but then I found them again. And something else. Beside the track was a metal cylinder, rising a foot or two out of the ground.

  A capped bore hole.

  There’d been a drilling rig here all right, and it had drilled on the outskirts of Karlujurru. Depending on the angle, the hole could well have bored right into the site itself. Lincoln would never have agreed to that. Not here. They didn’t come much holier than Karlujurru.

  Marsh, I thought, you cheeky bastard. Lincoln barely in his grave and already you’re drilling into his heartland. Or did you drill beforehand? Was this what Lincoln had found the day he died? Was this why he died? Did he spring you drilling for water? Did the two of you have another argument over it? Did you follow him home and murder him in the night?

  I rolled a smoke, took a long, slow drag, thought about the significance of what I’d seen. Whether I was any closer to finding out who’d killed Lincoln.

  Not particularly, I decided. Both of my main contenders were still shuffling round the ring. If the aquifer was accessible and deep, Marsh could have killed him to facilitate his rip-off over the water rights.

  The trouble was that the drilling could just as easily have been a motive for Blakie. A hole punched through the heart of Karlujurru. Even if Lincoln hadn’t known about it when it happened, he still bore ultimate responsibility for the sanctity of the site. He was kirta, the owner. In Blakie’s merciless system of justice that could well have meant he had to pay the price for its desecration. I thought about the butchered body, the missing kidney, the intricacies of responsibility and atonement among the Warlpuju.

  But was I getting ahead of myself? I didn’t even know for sure whether or not Marsh had actually drilled here. What was it Bickie had said? He’d found water close to the boundary. This hole was three or four kilometres in. Not what you’d call close. Had Bickie’s water been too salty? Were there other drill sites, closer to the fence? Maybe Marsh had been doing some exploratory drilling. I scrutinised the country. There were no more holes that I could see. A lot of the country round here was criss-crossed with old tracks and trails, pock-marked with mines, dams and other desecrations committed before blackfellers had any say in the matter. Could this be one of them? I needed to take a closer look.

  I considered my options, thought about climbing down.

  No. It was tough, and risky. Steep in parts, loose in others. And getting back up would be even worse. This was no country to be out alone in with a broken leg. I’d have to go the long way round.

  I climbed back down to where I’d parked, still chewing over what I’d seen. It would take me a good hour to get around to Karlujurru. I’d have to head up through the Mater Christi Jump-up, and it was a hell of a tough road for my little Hilux. Should I risk it now, or come back better equipped?

  The moment I broke out of the scrub I regretted the fact that, absorbed by the view in front of me, I hadn’t paid more attention to what was goi
ng on behind me.

  The big red F100 parked in front of my ute was the least of my worries. The two blokes sitting inside—their fiery faces and John Deere hats marking them as the kind of runaway urban trash who’d overrun the Territory in my absence—weren’t such a worry either.

  The worry was what was standing next to my car, its arms crossed, its feet squared, its glasses glowing.

  Earl Marsh.

  Black hole

  WE STOOD there for a moment, sizing each other up.

  He reminded me of a lump of weathered granite, all scarlet and black faceted, the sunlight glimmering off his blistered skin, the buckle on his enormous girth-strap gleaming. The most compelling aspects of the man were the five-gallon hat, the ten-gallon hands and the small, worried-looking woman reflected in his shades.

  ‘Mr Marsh!’ I began. ‘You’re looking particularly…’ I stumbled around for the right adjective, then settled on the glasses, ‘reflective today.’

  ‘You set me up,’ he barked.

  Small talk, I was beginning to realise, would never be one of the Marsh strong points. ‘On a pedestal?’

  His nostrils quivered. ‘You set your fuckin PC hounds onto me.’

  Tom McGillivray PC? Police constable once, presumably; but hardly politically correct. ‘I had some concerns which I reported to the relevant authorities.’

  ‘Well, the relevant fuckin authority is cooling its heels in Darwin, from what I hear.’

  ‘That was an impressive piece of political lobbying— congratulations—but it doesn’t answer the question, does it?’

  ‘Which is what?’ He loomed over me like a loose boulder in avalanche country. ‘Whether I killed some bloody blackfeller?’

  ‘Well, some bugger did.’