Gunshot Road

by Adrian Hyland

  I checked out the damage: a terrible array of scratches and scars down the right side. Cockburn was going to love that. I walked around the back, dreading what I might see.

  ‘Ah, the fuck!’ I threw my hat onto the ground, kicked a rock.

  The rear bumper was torn out of its socket, the support panel twisted. My larynx seemed to drop into my colon. I leaned into a tree for support, almost weeping. He was going to tear me limb from limb.

  Maybe I could get a bit of panel-beating done before I handed the car back to Cockburn? Maybe the sensitive family man I’d glimpsed would understand that these things happen on the job, let me off lightly? Maybe the pig’s head that had just run me off the road would reattach itself to its long-lost body and grow a set of wings.

  Bloody hell, this trip was turning into a disaster. I climbed aboard and headed west, still looking for the Galena turn-off. I wanted to see Jojo, now more than ever.

  As I drove, questions about the rampaging utility rose to the surface of my mind. Where had it come from? The car was a bit up-market for any of the Rabble. Some whistle-headed deadbeat from the town, no doubt.

  Could the driver have been the nosey bastard who’d been spying on us? Or, for that matter, killing wallabies out at Dingo Spring? He sure as hell wasn’t a rep for the World Wildlife Fund.

  I was still seething when I spotted a set of fresh wheel marks cutting in from the south. I pulled over, examined them.

  The Pig’s Head, for sure. The dust hadn’t settled yet.

  I looked down to where the tracks disappeared into a patch of mulga scrub lining a rough creek bed. What had he been up to in there? Why had he been haring down the road? Was he running away from something, or did he always drive like that?

  I stood on the steps to get a better look. Spotted something, a cloud of black smoke in the distance.

  Curiosity told me to follow the tracks in the direction of the smoke haze, caution and the prospect of a little Jojo TLC told me to push on to the west.

  I compromised: told myself I’d give it half an hour, turned south and followed the creek.

  It was rough going, but the Tojo was up to it. I threw her into rock-crawling mode, and for ten minutes I gave the vehicle its head as we pitched and canted along rocky slopes and beetling creek beds.

  Eventually the terrain levelled out and I came to the source of the smoke: a wildfire rolling through the spinifex. It had already burned a patch a kilometre or two square, but was running up against the barren slopes and unlikely to get much further.

  Lightning strike? There hadn’t been any. Runaway campfire? Perhaps. I poked around the eastern edge of the burn, found an abandoned campsite. Empty bottles and tinnies, wrappers and patches, a punctured jerry can. All recent. Lengths of black metal: used welding rods.

  Mr Pig’s Head? Probably.

  What had he been welding?

  I picked up a handful of hot stubble, blew it away. Fragments and floating ash drifted across my fingers.

  Something stayed in the palm of my hand. Melted plastic. Poly pipe.

  The beer and the jerry I could understand—everybody out here needed fuel—but the poly?

  Irrigation.

  What was he growing?

  I walked out over the burn, scratched around. Nothing jumped out at me; whatever had been here was thoroughly destroyed.

  I glanced at the westering sun, stored my suspicions away. They’d keep, as would Pig’s Head Bloke. Time to be on my way.

  Galena Creek

  ANOTHER DRY CREEK—GALENA, this one. More signs of habitation. Welcoming, familiar signs: a twenty-foot canvas tarp hung from the trees, a bench of bush timber hammered together by an incompetent hand, a Mexican hammock, the weirdest chair imaginable—basically a bolt of canvas stretched across angled branches. A locked chest where I presumed he kept his tucker.

  And, hanging from the centre pole, a picture of—me! All was forgiven.

  But in the nude, the dirty bastard! There I was, emerging from a rock hole, hair whirling, water wheeling, taken by surprise.

  When had he taken that, the randy git? Must have been that evening a couple of months ago when the weather was ratcheting into killer mode and water was the only solution; we’d thrown our bedrolls into the pickup truck, driven up to Purtulyu rock-hole, spent a beautiful night under the stars and each other.

  I took a look around the camp: everything was here except the feller I’d come to see.

  Come on Jojo, where the hell are you?

  I hadn’t allowed for this, a three-hour detour only to find his camp empty. I didn’t have time to hang around, and he could be gone for days. I knew the way his mind worked: something attracted him—something unusual—an albino wallaby, a flight of king and queen termites, an eagle spiralling in the wrong direction—and he wouldn’t budge until he had it figured out and filed for future reference.

  The sun was gone now, but the bush hummed with the scarlet afterburn, transfigured.

  ‘Jojo,’ I said out loud, ’please don’t do this to me.’

  And then I heard it, the answer to my prayers: the deep rumbling motor I knew so well.

  Thirty seconds later I caught a glimpse of a Parks and Wildlife Toyota—Annie, by name—wending her way along the Galena creek bed.

  I grinned. Too good an opportunity to miss. I whipped my boots off, shimmied up a tree, watched as the car came easing into camp. I judged the moment and dropped down onto the roof rack. Leaned forward and thrust my head in through the open window.

  ‘You’re under arrest!’

  Then came very close to falling off.

  Wrong man.

  Stiff and sore

  NO IT WASN’T: SOMEWHERE in among the prickle patch was a red beanie.

  I hadn’t recognised him: windswept and wild-haired, scraggily bearded, nearly as black as me; he’d been in the bush so long he’d started to decompose.

  ‘Fuck!’ he exclaimed, his jaw dropping.

  ‘If you insist.’

  I swung down through the rear window, feet first, popped up behind him and buried my face in the foliage that had enveloped his head; found something cartilaginous, hopefully an ear.

  ‘Hello Jojo,’ I said into it.

  ‘Emily!’ He laughed hard, pushed himself away, shaking his head. His hair rustled, it was so thickly encrusted with sweat and dirt. ‘Scared the shit out of me. What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I think it’s called foreplay, but it’s been so long they may have another name for it now.’

  ‘But how’d you find me?’

  I lifted my head up from where it had been busily trying to untangle a lobe from its encompassing curls. ‘Everybody seems to know where you are except me.’ I paused, gave him the hard stare. ‘You gotta problem?’

  ‘Course not—been planning on coming in.’

  I reached over, laid a hand on his shorts. ‘Well you can come in right now.’

  He grinned and groaned. ‘Dunno if I’m up to that.’

  ‘I’ll get you up to it,’ I said, fossicking around.

  ‘Don’t you at least want to say hello?’

  ‘I am saying hello.’

  ‘Been perched up a tree all day. I’m all stiff and sore…’

  ‘Well, we’re half way there.’

  ‘Yeah but…’

  ‘No buts. Other than mine.’

  ‘Just give me a minute to…’

  ‘Deliver a lecture on the mating habits of the rufous wallaby? No thanks, honey—got mating habits of my own to accommodate.’

  I ran my tongue round his throat, breathed deep, savoured the desert aromas: the oils and the burns, the bush tobacco, indigo and mint, red iron dirt.

  ‘Come here you,’ I whispered, slipping a hand down onto the lever and easing the seat back. I climbed over his shoulders and worked my way down through buttons and belts, shedding the odd article of clothing myself. Tackled his trousers head first.

  ‘Why hello there.’ I grinned up at him. ‘Thought you
said you weren’t up to it?’

  ‘Seems to have a life of his own.’

  I licked my lips. So did he. I took him into my mouth.

  ‘Ouch!’ he yelped.

  ‘Ouch?’

  ‘No teeth, please.’

  ‘Sorry—they must have grown.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ he groaned. ‘Been a while for me too…’

  ‘Well whose fault is that?’

  ‘Don’t speak with your mouth full. Might get more than you bargained for.’

  ‘Good-oh.’

  ‘Yeah, but Krakatoa…?’

  ‘Let er rip.’

  ‘You won’t eat for a week. Ouch! Hey, how long since you cut your toenails?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘It is my business. Think you just cut my ear off. Feel like Peter in the Garden.’

  ‘It was him did the chopping, idiot. Where’s the Lord, then?’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Oh, there He is…’

  ‘Thought I said no teeth!’

  ‘…but it isn’t over till the cock’s crowed. Three times, if I recall.’

  A minute or two flew by, then he emitted an ominously wobbly groan.

  ‘Oi, hang on,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean, hang on?’ he gulped. ‘We’re talking irresistible forces and immovable objects here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call your object immovable, but I’d like to…’ I swivelled around, threw a leg over and thrust down onto him, arched my back and gripped the wheel, ‘…be there when it happens.’

  ‘Hey, watch me mirror!’

  ‘Oh shut the fuck up.’

  ‘I love it when you…aaaaggh!’

  He shuddered and grunted, threw his hips forward and his arms out, wrapped me in a frantic embrace—then flopped back into the seat. He stared at the roof, gave me an idiot grin, then closed his eyes, the hopeless bastard.

  ‘That’s it?’

  He was drifting off into Sleepy Hollow.

  ‘Er—hello?’

  No response.

  ‘Oi! Jojo!’

  He stirred himself for long enough to mumble, ‘Aw come on, Em, I’m fucked.’

  ‘Well I’m not—not properly, anyway.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Just gimme five.’

  A drawn-out silence ensued. Pleasant enough, if you like that sort of thing—a hawk moth waved at us from the other side of the windscreen, a nightjar drifted in to say hello—but my mind was on lower things. Crickets called, katydids didn’t. Something rustled in the back of the car: not a snake, I hoped. Though if it was it was showing more life than certain other snakes in the vicinity.

  I tapped Jojo on the forehead.

  ‘Five what?’ I enquired politely. ‘Days? Weeks?’

  Was something stirring down there?

  ‘Minutes,’ he mumbled.

  Yes, it was.

  ‘Starting when?’

  A smile in his eyes. ‘Oh—bout four and a half minutes ago.’

  Breakfast at Jojo’s

  I WOKE AT FIRST light.

  He was looking particularly ugly this morning: head on the pillow, pop-eyed, covered in knobbly spikes, staring me in the face. His tongue shot out and zapped a passing ant.

  ‘Jojo!’

  ‘Emily?’ He turned around from where he was kick-starting the fire.

  ‘There’s a thorny devil on the bedroll.’

  ‘Oh good. I was wondering where it got to.’

  He came over, picked the lizard up and gave it a friendly nuzzle of the whiskers.

  ‘You two know each other?’ I asked.

  ‘Been hanging round for a few days.’

  ‘I mighta heard him in the car last night.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘He gotta name?’

  ‘Roughhead. And he’s a she.’

  ‘Figures.’ I sniffed, suddenly felt famished. ‘What’s for breakfast?’

  ‘For her or you?’

  ‘She’s already had hers.’

  He grinned, laid the lizard aside, held up a tin of beef stew.

  ‘Bully beef! You’re having me on?’ I was mildly shocked.

  ‘Keeps you regular.’

  ‘In what? Dashes to the shithouse? I been eating au naturel for the past few days: porcupine, turkey…’

  ‘Yeah, you and every other bugger. It’s my job to look after those poor besieged critters. I’ll see what I can do to spice her up.’

  He rummaged around in the back of his car, came up with some bush potatoes, pigweed, mallee seeds and nuts. Threw them into oven or ash, as seemed appropriate.

  As he was standing up, a wood swallow darted between us, almost brushed his leg. ‘Do it again!’ he smiled, but the bird was gone.

  I nestled in his arms while we watched our breakfast simmer.

  ‘So what’s been going on, Em?’

  ‘What’s been coming off, more like it.’

  ‘That’s what’s puzzling me—I couldn’t help but notice—one of the things that came off last night looked suspiciously like a police uniform. And unless I’m wrong, that Toyota under the beefwood is a cop car.’

  I rolled a smoke and gave him the story—cautiously. With good reason: Jojo was as enthusiastic about my new career as everybody else had been.

  ‘And you’re saying Tom McGillivray encouraged you to take this on?’ He scratched his beard, bewildered.

  ‘Sure he did.’

  ‘Yeah. And you’re out here checking out Doc’s death? They let you run around on your own like that?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘I can imagine. Didn’t know what they were letting loose. Good god!’ He stared into the fire for a minute. ‘Came across him out here myself, you know.’

  ‘God?’

  ‘Him too. But I meant Doc. Bumped into him and old Ted Jupurulla once, out on Jingilyi Creek, west of the Gunshot.’

  ‘I heard they did a bit of running round out there. Travelling to Dingo Springs, were they?’

  He followed a trail of smoke as it unravelled into the air, nodded thoughtfully. ‘Maybe—I never made it out that far, but they were heading in that direction. Another time I found him out here on his own, the silly old bugger.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Not that long ago. Few months, maybe.’

  ‘Didn’t think he was up to solitary expeditions then.’

  ‘He wasn’t. Disoriented, perishing, flat tyre—smashing away at his wheel with a hammer, trying to get the nuts loose. Raving like a lunatic…’

  ‘Don’t suppose you remember what he was raving about?’ Everybody I’d met so far had described Doc as ranting and raving; Jojo was the sort of man who might have paid attention to the gibberish. He was good at unpicking things.

  ‘Sure. Most of it was rubbish: world burning up, bastards won’t be happy till they’ve killed us all, that sort of thing.’

  World burning up? That made sense in a weird, Doc sort of way. One of the tenets of the Snowball theory is that, after the great freeze, the climate swung the other way, and there was a period of intense global warming. Given the temporal distortions going on in his addled brain, maybe he thought it was happening now.

  Come to think of it, he wasn’t that far off the mark; the weather had been hell of late, an ominous portent of what we all knew was coming.

  ‘One thing puzzled me,’ added Jojo. ‘He said he wanted it set in stone—no bastard’d believe him otherwise.’

  The image of Doc’s rock garden flashed into my mind.

  ‘Wanted what set in stone? That the world’s warming up?’

  ‘Thought so at first—but then he said something really strange—said it was all his fault.’

  ‘What—the warming?’

  ‘Maybe—it was a rather disjointed conversation.’ He narrowed his eyes, trying to dredge up the details. ‘But I got the impression he was talking about old Ted.’

  ‘Eh? Blamed himself for the old man’s illness?’

  ‘Sounded like it.’ />
  ‘Odd.’

  ‘I thought so too. I was curious enough to ask the bush nurse about it, and she set me straight: Ted was dying of cancer.’

  ‘Yeah, but who could tell what was going on in Doc’s head? He had a brain tumour himself.’

  Jojo poured us both a tea, swivelled his round the cup. Frowned. ‘Seems to be a lot of cancer running round this part of the world.’

  ‘That’s the twenty-first century for you, Jojo: carcinogenic. And hell, they were both getting on. Gotta go, you gotta go. So what did you do with Doc? Bring him back in?’

  ‘Part of the way, but then we ran into some fellers from the mines.’

  ‘The Rabble?’

  ‘No, the new place, Green Saturn. They were pretty helpful; drove him home, went back later and picked up the car. Heard later they had it repaired and delivered back to him.’

  ‘Decent of them. And that was the last time you saw him?’

  He gave our breakfast a stir and the question a moment’s consideration. ‘Nope, come across him again, just before he died.’

  ‘How long before he died?’

  ‘Maybe a week.’

  ‘Not on his own, surely?’

  ‘No, doubt whether he could even handle a car by then. He was with his brother.’

  I just about dropped my pannikin. ‘He was with Wishy?’

  ‘What’s the problem? That’s what brothers are for.’

  ‘I’m surprised nobody told me—especially Wishy himself. I was just talking to him a few days ago.’

  ‘Wouldn’t read too much into it. The old feller was barely conscious—curled up in the corner of the cab, talking to his Geiger counter and eating a milk arrowroot.’

  I flicked the remnants of my cigarette into the fire.

  ‘Wishy mention what they were up to?’

  ‘Said the old boy was sick—figured a bush-bash into his favourite part of the world might cheer him up.’

  ‘I suppose that makes as much sense as anything else round here.’

  A hiss and a trickle of liquid emerged from the oven in the ashes.

  ‘Tucker sounds ready.’