Gunshot Road

by Adrian Hyland

  Another copper—muffin-shaped body, shaved head—came shambling down the road. This one was all too familiar: Constable Rex Griffiths, a neighbour of mine when I lived in town. I climbed to my feet. Hesitated.

  ‘Where’s the super?’ I heard Griffo enquire.

  ‘Fucked if we know. Said he’d be here by five-thirty.’

  ‘Breakfast.’ Griffo tossed a couple of greasy packages at them. I recognised the smell: hamburgers from the BP all-nighter. ‘With the lot.’

  ‘Beetroot?’ asked Adam’s Apple.

  ‘Course. Nothin beats a root.’

  ‘Speakin of which, doesn’t our little black bint start today?’

  ‘That’ll be interesting.’

  A dig in the ribs. ‘Come on, Griffo, I heard you fancied her.’‘Gimme a break!’

  ‘But those tits?’

  ‘Yeah, and that mouth! And the look when you piss her off-like a fuckin blowtorch!’

  I gave a little cough, stepped out from under the trees, thumbs in my pockets.

  ‘Morning boys.’ Silence: a row of open mouths, slithering eyes. ‘Slack bastard, that McGillivray.’

  I filled the awkward interval that followed by getting out the papers and rolling a smoke. Griffo was busy choking on his burger, but he did manage a round of beetroot-splattered introductions: the pig-man was Senior Constable Darren Harley, the redhead was Bunter Goodwin.

  They all looked enormously relieved when McGillivray’s Cruiser came rolling down the road. But it wasn’t the superintendent at the wheel. The tinted window descended and the driver, a senior sergeant I didn’t recognise, leaned over and told us to get in. ‘Not you, Griffiths. McGillivray wants you to man the station.’

  My new colleagues hopped to it—without, I noticed, the banter that would have accompanied an order from McGillivray himself. I rated the briefest of acknowledgments as I settled into the back seat.

  ‘You’ll be the new ACPO, then?’ Observant. ‘Emily, is it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Bruce Cockburn. No smoking in the car, thanks.’

  ‘Sorry.’ I killed it.

  ‘Government vehicle,’ he expanded.

  ‘Right.’

  He frowned, popped a stick of spearmint into his mouth with a vigour that made me suspect he was a recovering smoker himself. He had a deep-tanned face, blond hair, pepper-flecked, crisp cut. Smooth, regular features you might have called handsome if it weren’t for the hint of a sneer curdling his upper lip. His forehead gleamed in the streetlight, as if he worked saddle cream into it before going to bed.

  He examined me with harsh blue eyes. ‘Thought they gave you a uniform?’

  I gestured at the shoulder tabs of my flash new shirt.

  ‘Where are the pants?’

  ‘They came up to my neck.’

  He looked at my neck, didn’t seem to like what he saw.

  ‘Where’s the super?’ asked Griffo, still malingering on the footpath.

  ‘Up in Emergency.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘One of our’—the flicker of a glance in my direction—‘indigenous brothers gave him a smack in the face.’

  I read the glance. Shrugged to myself. Not my brother’s keeper.

  ‘What’s the damage?’

  ‘Broken nose. Maybe a skull fracture.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Waiting for the X-rays when I left.’

  He pulled away, left Griffo gawping on the pavement. He slowed down when we reached the hospital.

  ‘We paying a visit?’ I asked. ‘I would have bought flowers.’

  ‘Not we,’ said Cockburn. ‘You.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Superintendent said he wants a word before we go down to Green Swamp.’

  The man with the ice-cream face

  I WALKED INTO EMERGENCY. Nobody home. A woman somewhere behind a curtain sounded pissed off with the service: ‘But Doc, I got a lump on me arse the size of a tennis ball!’

  ‘I have told you—it is a cyst.’ A sharp, slightly accented voice. ‘It will go away of its own accord.’

  The Bluebush Hospital bragged about its open-door policy, so I thought I’d give it a work-out. I pushed in through the swinging doors.

  A doctor—harried, hard-nosed, wearing her coat like a kevlar vest—sprang out of a cubicle and snapped at me, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘Tom McGillivray.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘He’s what I want. Emily Tempest’s who I am. He’s my boss.’ Somewhat belatedly, she noticed the uniform. Fair enough; it wasn’t much of a uniform. I wouldn’t have noticed it myself if I hadn’t been wearing it. She nodded at a cubicle. ‘He’s in there.’

  I drew back the curtain.

  McGillivray was stretched out on a hospital trolley, and a more miserable sight I’d never laid eyes on. He was draped in a blood-stained hospital gown, knobbly knees spread left and right. A glimpse of something more horribly knobbly in between. His eyes were shut, his mouth would have looked better if it was too. There seemed to be fewer teeth than I remembered. His head was partially eclipsed by a massive bandage through which his fat nose protruded: the general effect was of a man who’d had an ice-cream cone rammed into his face.

  On his chest, folded open, face down, was a book. I walked over, looked at the title. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

  ‘Where you want us to bury the rest of you?’

  The bruised eyes crept open. Slowly, painfully, he tilted his head in my direction, groaned. ‘Town tip’d do nicely.’

  ‘Hate to tell you this Tom, but your donger’s on display.’

  He glanced down, delicately rearranged the covers.

  I examined his face. ‘What’s the damage?’

  ‘Nose in two places. Cheekbone in three.’

  ‘Pride?’

  ‘Multiple.’

  ‘So who was it? The Sandhill Gang?’

  A painful silence.

  ‘Come on, Tom. I’m here to avenge you. The Westside Boys? Dick Pennyfeather?’

  ‘It was dark.’

  ‘Tom…’

  He sighed, dropped his head back down onto the pillow. Mumbled, ‘Aaangsaf…’

  ‘Sorry?’

  A deep breath. ‘Googangzaf…’

  ‘Not the Crankshafts?’

  The ghost of a nod.

  ‘You poor bastard.’ The Crankshafts were the most ferocious family in the district, and had been carrying on a running battle with the cops since the day of the horse and saddle. ‘Which one? Spider?’

  No response.

  ‘Bernie?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Godsake Tom—not all of them?’ En masse, they were a sight to make the blood run cold and the feet run hot.

  He mumbled into the bandages. ‘Goo-gee’.

  ‘Sorry, almost sounded like you said “Cookie”.’

  ‘I did.’

  I tried and failed to keep a straight face.

  Cookie Crankshaft, the grandfather of the clan, was one of my favourite countrymen, if for no other reason than that he was about the only one I could stand up and look straight in the eye. Neither Cookie nor I, in the unimaginable event of our wanting to, would have come up to Tom’s nipples.

  And then there was the minor matter of a walking frame.

  ‘Come across him staggering round the bottom of Stealer’s Wheel, marinated as per usual. The crowd’s coming out of the Speedway any tick, so I try to get him off the road.’ He touched his face, gingerly, flinched. ‘Pitch black, didn’t see a thing, but I think he smacked me with the frame. Either that or he had a star picket in his pants. When I woke up my head felt like it had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson’s teeth.’

  ‘Serves you right for hassling defenceless old drunks.’

  He rolled his eyes, an action that appeared to give him grief. ‘About this job. When you agreed to take it on…’

  ‘You mean when I gave in to your blackmail?’

  ‘I figured I’
d be around to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Well I’ll be in Sergeant Cockburn’s capable hands now.’

  ‘Ugh…Cockburn…’ He flopped back into the pillows.

  ‘Come on Tom, spit it out.’

  ‘Hear he’s a top squash player.’

  ‘Ah.’ That was a worry.

  ‘Only been over here a couple of months. Transfer from Queensland. You and him…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He seems like a competent operator—plays it by the book. It’s just…’

  I helped him out. ‘Nobody’s told him the book hasn’t been written yet?’

  He gave a weary half-smile. ‘Take a fuckin Shakespeare on speed to write the book for Bluebush.’ He tried to get comfortable. Failed. ‘Look, I dunno who shoved a burr up his arse, but—don’t you rub it the wrong way.’

  ‘I see.’ The horrible image of me rubbing anything at all in the vicinity of Cockburn’s arse defied elaboration.

  I jumped to my feet. No point in hanging round. ‘Don’t you worry about me, Tom. Me and him, maybe we’ll write the book between us.’

  That wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. Either that or the painkillers were wearing off.

  Hit the road running

  IT HADN’T TAKEN ME long to make McGillivray’s day; the sky was just starting to lighten. The police Toyota was loitering in the ambulance bay, motor running, lights low. I climbed aboard. My fellow passengers said nothing. Cockburn reversed, gunned her out onto the highway: the Toyota was on cruise control, and so was he.

  The streetlights and houses thinned out, then fell away, their places taken by the saltbush and spinifex which dominate the Bluebush environs. Termite mounds loomed in the gathering light like an army of terracotta warriors.

  Harley and Bunter struck up a desultory conversation about dog obedience training. Evidently Harley’s bouncy young mongrel had been playing it fast and loose with the chickens; Bunter was dubious about the tactical response.

  ‘Mate, I could understand you bashing its head in with a hammer, but did you have to do it in front of the kids?’

  Harley shrugged. ‘They’re the ones wanted a dog.’

  ‘At a barbeque?’

  ‘What’s it matter where? They gotta learn.’

  Jesus wept. I turned for relief to the scenery, the objects rushing by: white plastic posts, red echoing reflectors, livid pinks and blues rippling in the east.

  I gazed at the horizon and there, just for a moment, felt a shivering intimation of something loping along beyond it. Something quicksilver bright, ominous. Pulsating with animal heat.

  What was that?

  I was unaccountably shaken. The reflection of my own discomfort at the job I was doing? A premonition of the threatened heatwave?

  I thought of Gypsy. Kandiyi karlujana. The song is broken.

  A violent orange blob wobbled onto the horizon. Golden rays came levelling in through skeletal branches, flooded the inside of the cabin, copper-plating the coppers and gilding chrome. Cockburn’s ears glowed like radioactive apricots.

  As we climbed into the hills south of town, we pulled past an abandoned wreck on the side of the road. A green HQ Holden—battered about, not much in the way of window glass but four tyres. More paint than rust. A blackfeller car.

  Abandoned?

  There was something familiar about it. I scrolled through the database of community vehicles I kept inside my head. Maybe Magpie Jangala, a Kantulyu man from Stonehouse Creek.

  I took a closer look. Something was out of place. There was a slight turbulence in the air. Ribbons of red dust—more dust than Magpie’s old wagon should have stirred—trembled on shafts of light.

  ‘Mind pulling over for a moment, sarge?’ I said quietly.

  ‘What?’ said Cockburn.

  ‘Something I want to check out.’

  The shoulder blades went into defensive mode. ‘We only just left town.’

  ‘The blackfeller car,’ said Bunter, who must have followed my gaze.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Cockburn spat. ‘This isn’t a breakdown service. We’re on our way to a homicide.’

  ‘Just for a second? There’s…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Stop the bloody car!’ I heard myself yell, and Cockburn seemed as surprised as I was to find it slamming to a halt.

  I was out the door before the wheels stopped rolling. As I sprinted I began to take in other signs of disturbance: scorched bitumen, slewing skid marks in the gravel. Flattened bushes, partially concealed by the Holden.

  I broke through the scrub, and there was the chaos I’d expected.

  A Range Rover on its back, down in the gully. A bloke lying alongside it, a trio of Aboriginal people around him.

  ‘Ambulance!’ I bellowed at my partners, then dashed down the slope.

  Motors and wheels

  IT WAS MAGPIE ALL right, standing alongside his wife, Meg Brambles. She was crouching, holding a rag to the injured man’s face.

  With them was a teenage boy: Danny. Their grandson—and Rambling Rosie’s son. My second encounter with the Brambles, and the sun no more than a finger’s breadth above the horizon.

  The grandparents appeared anxious, but Danny looked positively traumatised. He was staring at the wreck, his elbows clenched, his face an echo of the mess of shattered metal and debris among which he stood.

  A mob of dogs—Magpie’s no doubt, he was always a big one for the dogs—skulked around, looking for a chance to score.

  Magpie spotted me, seemed relieved. He was a nuggetty fellow, sprightly and spry, wearing patched pants and a pencil-thin mustache that made him look like a short black Errol Flynn. He shook my hand, muttered a greeting.

  Before I could respond we were bustled out of the way by Cockburn, cruising in to take control. He was on his home turf now, assessing damage, issuing orders, despatching lackeys. Competent, I had to admit. More puzzling was the flash of irritation when he glanced at me.

  What now? I wondered. Would you rather we’d just driven past? Whoever was dead out on the Gunshot wasn’t going to be needing us in a hurry. I was beginning to see what Tom meant about the burr up this guy’s arse.

  Harley came bustling in with a first-aid kit. Meg, no longer needed, came and stood with us.

  ‘How’s the whitefeller?’ I asked.

  ‘Reckon this one’ll be okay; bit of a bump on the head. Wanted to get up, but I made im stay down. Stop the blood.’

  Meg spent much of her life patching people up. Out at Stonehouse she was the health worker. And the teacher, come to think of it. And foster mother to half the dropouts and delinquents in the district. She’d done a bit of patching in her time.

  The crash victim drew himself up onto an elbow, took us in, nodded his appreciation. He was red haired, with a soft, white face, hooded eyes, a blue denim shirt. He turned away when Harley offered him a swig of water, drank gratefully.

  ‘Nother feller bin finish, parnparr,’ she added.

  ‘What other feller?’

  A sudden oath, followed closely by a pistol shot, rang out from the far side of the vehicle.

  I darted around. A dog lay on its side, splattered. As was the poor bastard who’d been driving the Range Rover. His upper body, half out the window, crushed by a ton of flying metal. His head a mess of ruddy gore and crushed bone.

  ‘Bloody mongrel.’ Cockburn was holstering his pistol. ‘Licking this bloke’s brains.’

  ‘They normally go away if you say “Go away!”’

  Just for a moment he looked as if he’d like to give me the same treatment he’d given the dog.

  ‘Bunter!’ He turned and barked at the red-haired copper. ‘Cover him up.’

  I went back to Danny and Meg. Magpie was moving around the crash site, gathering up debris and laying it alongside the path. Trying to be of some use, now that the professionals had taken over.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ I told him. ‘Ambulance’ll be here soon. Tow trucks. More cops. Thei
r job.’

  ‘That feller bin lose ’is mate,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘I give im a hand.’ He picked up a waterbottle, some scattered tools, a leather satchel and a tyre iron, laid them alongside the track.

  ‘You did well, the three of you. Might have saved this bloke’s life. Could have laid out here for days if you hadn’t spotted him. Heading for town, were you?’

  ‘Yuwayi. Comin in from Stonehouse.’

  I turned to Danny. His eyes were hopping about like startled finches.

  When I first came back to Bluebush a couple of years ago, Danny had struck me as the sweetest and freest of the town’s teen spirits. He hardly ever went to school; few of his peer group did. But he cruised around town as though it was his own little playground, a quick smile and a cheeky word for everyone. He’d clip you on the arse and laugh as he sprinted by; flog a chip from your carton.

  He must be fifteen now, a slender boy with a glorious jungle of flashing dreadlocks tightly coiled. A broad mouth, slightly random teeth, a wisp of bumfluff on his chin. His feet were dust covered, bare, ready to run. Lately, I’d heard, the running had turned to riding in hot cars and the chip habit to drink and drugs. Fun for a while, but the long-term prospects were poor. Non-existent, really.

  ‘So Danny—you staying out there too? Stonehouse?’

  He settled, ever so slightly. He’d always seemed somehow comforted by my presence. God knows why: I had the opposite effect on everybody else.

  ‘Yuwayi.’ A low voice. ‘Quiet place.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘No machines.’

  ‘Machines?’

  ‘All em Bluebush motors and wheels. Generator wind, clockin time. Sometimes you gotta get away.’

  I paused. There was an edgy timbre to Danny’s voice, and the words didn’t make a huge amount of sense. I hadn’t seen him for months. Maybe the drugs I’d heard about were catching up with him. With Rambling Rosie for a mother it was a miracle they’d given him any start at all.

  Meg touched his elbow. ‘Good boy, this one. Just worry too much for nothin.’

  Typical Meg. She was one of the strong women of our community, the ones who took up the slack, who cared for the wasted and the wounded. That was why she and Magpie had set up Stonehouse Creek: as an antidote to the town. At any given moment, you’d find them out there: the petrol sniffers and meth-heads, broken-down cowboys and motherless children, drinkers and dreamers. She and Magpie would pick them up, take them out bush, give them a bit of breathing space. Show them their country.