Gunshot Road

by Adrian Hyland

  Looked like Doc had been conning every able-bodied man in the region into chauffeuring for him.

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Where didn’t we go? All over the del Fuego, far as I could figure out: a great long scraggly expedition to hell and back, roughest country you could imagine, scorpions and snakes, broken axles, punctures. Took me a week of bloody misery to work it out.’

  ‘To work what out?’

  His mouth narrowed into a tight circle. ‘That it was crap, the whole thing! Doc couldn’t have cared less about gold—what he was trying to do was figure the geology. Measuring faults and fracture lines, testing the water. He’d only taken out the leases so no other bugger’d come along and rough it up before he’d had a proper look at it. Oh, he could spruik, all right—raving about rainforests, glaciers…’

  ‘And snowballs?’

  ‘Yeah, he told me about the snowballs. Ice across the desert sixty million years ago’—out by an order of ten, but never mind—‘but gold? Minerals? Anything that’s gonna put dinner on the table? Nada!’

  ‘Breakfast, Emily!’ June’s voice came drizzling out of the dining room.

  I turned back to her husband, was mildly alarmed to see him running a fat finger along the length of the cleaver. I instinctively backed off.

  ‘Been back there since?’

  ‘Flat out runnin this place.’

  ‘But your name’s still on the exploration licences…’

  ‘Well I did pay for the bloody things.’

  ‘And you’ll reap whatever benefits there are.’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake!’ He slammed the cleaver into the side of beef. ‘This is harassment.’

  ‘Noel?’ June appeared in the doorway. She studied him anxiously, then turned to me.

  ‘Maybe you better come and have breakfast, Emily. Noel’s been under a lot of pressure lately.’ She looked back at her husband, who was still shaking. ‘Have you had your tablets, darl?’

  ‘Tablets!’ Anger chopping holes in his diction. ‘Like to find her a fuckin tablet—made of marble.’

  ‘Now Noel, that’s not going to…’

  ‘Little bitch barges in here, virtually saying I killed the old…’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not what she meant.’

  Maybe it wasn’t, I said to myself as I walked away. But I’m sure as hell thinking about it now.

  I sat down to breakfast. I suppose it was bacon and eggs, but it could have been grilled gruel for all I noticed, so furiously was my mind swarming with questions.

  How far could I believe Redman? He’d sounded convincing, I had to admit; if he could fake that amount of aggro he was up there with Robert De Niro. But I wasn’t ready to dismiss the possibility Doc had stumbled across something of value and been killed for it.

  Then again, what about Mr Pig’s Head? He’d been growing something out there, and it wasn’t cauliflowers. Could Doc have sprung him, threatened to turn him in? He’d been a cantankerous old bastard at the best of times.

  And where did Wishy Ozolins fit into all of this? For some reason I couldn’t shake the suspicion—the fear, almost, because I liked the man—that he did.

  I paid my bill, drove back to the shack, parked in the shade of Doc’s carport. Noticed, for the first time, a little row of faded flags on the side of the veranda.

  Jet was on her knees, chisel in one hand, hammer in the other, ferociously laying into a slab of granite. The flare of her shoulder blades, the ripple down the spine: she was oblivious to everything but the job at hand.

  I stood back, studied her creation.

  The patch of dirt beside the shack was covered in a strangely magnetic web of rocks and wood. Quartz crystals were positioned about the installation in a way that sent their reflected light sheering like water down corridors of stone.

  A series of sketches lay against the edge of the rocks. I saw they were interpretations of Doc’s original formation, made from every conceivable perspective and covered in diagrams and dotted lines, circles and arrows, mathematical equations.

  ‘This is how you…investigate, then?’

  She turned around, her eyes mercurial. Downed tools, stood up, ran her hands across her face, her tongue across her lips. She was wearing blue shorts, a black singlet, dirty boots and a river of sweat.

  ‘This creation of the Doc’s—it fascinates. I try to—to copy? Yes. But more. To complete. To give that man the silence for which he would search.’

  ‘When you find it, let me know what it looks like, will you?’

  She flashed sharp little fox teeth. ‘It begins, perhaps, with a cup of tea?’

  ‘Maybe a quick one before I hit the road. But please—I’ll be mother.’

  I ignored her puzzled expression, went inside, scoured the cupboards, found some of Doc’s old Bushells. Made two teas, one black, the other yellow, joined her on the veranda. She had her boots off, her beautifully shaped feet exposed to the morning sun.

  I sat there, my gaze drawn irresistibly to her creation.

  ‘Where’d you learn to do that sort of work, Jet?’

  ‘In nunnery.’

  I sprayed a mouthful of tea across my knees. ‘You’re a nun?’

  ‘In Qinghai—many make nun. When young woman, I make the—how you say? Promise?’

  ‘Vow?’

  ‘Vow. Our work restoring the sculpture destroyed in Culture Revolution.’

  ‘Lot of things destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, I know.’

  She tossed her head, spat. ‘Is karma. But I find the figures I make—the carving and the hammers—they overwhelm. Rise up inside, will not lie down. For me, I understand, it is the art that is my path. My fate.’

  ‘So you threw away the beads and took up the hammer?’

  A wry movement of the lips. ‘Some of the beads. Sometimes the hammer.’

  We sat there quietly, soaked up the serenity. Enjoy it while you can, I told myself—serenity will be a scarce commodity once Cockburn gets his hooks into you. You shouldn’t be doing this, you should be getting back to town, facing the music. I closed my eyes, came close to drifting off. Jet lay a foot against mine.

  Yap! Yap! Yap! I sprang up and spilled my tea.

  There was a demented toilet brush dancing frantically at the foot of the stairs: Stiffy the Wonder Dog—the wonder being that no bastard had put him out of our misery yet—had tracked me down.

  He bounced about, tail bristling, lower teeth taking up most of his face. I wondered whether he’d been trained to hate Asians as much as he hated blacks, whether he was an equal opportunity bigot.

  I found a lump of wood, waved it at him. ‘Gworn ya little mongrel, piss off!’

  Stiffy went apeshit. Dogshit, in fact. He just about came in mid-air, such was his excitement. He had a go at my leg, so I kicked him into a spiralling backward somersault.

  Fuck, that was an annoying animal. I rose to go inside.

  ‘Desist,’ snapped Jet.

  I turned around.

  Stiffy was gone.

  ‘Shit—you learn that in the nunnery?’

  ‘I surprise myself. The dog has perhaps found something more interesting.’

  She walked to the edge of the veranda, stood with her hands on her hips. ‘It ascends the slope.’

  I glanced across at the pub. Speaking of interesting, the first customers had arrived.

  One of them was a beige pickup with a pig’s head on the bull-bar.

  ‘You know that Toyota, Jet?’

  She peered across at it. ‘I see the people more than what they drive.’

  ‘Bit hard to ignore that one: it’s got a pig’s head on it.’

  ‘Ah yes—a man with a lead beard.’

  ‘Lead?’

  She frowned. ‘Red.’

  ‘He gotta name?’

  ‘You do not talk to that one. He has wall around him—invisible bricks, no? But I have heard him called—Blent, perhaps?’

  Blent. ‘He a regular, this Blent?’

&nb
sp; ‘Perhaps not. Sometimes on a weekend, a fly…Friday night.’

  ‘Maybe the name’s Brent.’

  ‘That is what I said. I believe he is a man from Bluebush.’

  I nodded, pleased to have saved myself a bit of running around. Like I’d guessed, the feller was a townie.

  ‘Might have a word with him before I go.’

  She was studying my face with interest. ‘Do you ever take a moment to look around, meditate upon the silence?’

  ‘Course I do. Sometimes.’ I scratched my chin, wondering when the hell I ever did anything that could be remotely described as ‘meditating upon silence’.

  ‘Ah, I think not.’ She stretched her legs, closed her eyes, let the morning sun wash over her face. ‘For me, it is the silence that defines this country. The peace.’

  The words were barely out of her mouth when the cliff overhanging the cabin fell on top of us.

  Landslide

  IT BEGAN INNOCUOUSLY ENOUGH: a muffled thump from above, a puff of dust, an echo recoiling out over the plains.

  We jumped up in time to see the skull-shaped boulder—the one Jet had been sitting on the first time I laid eyes on her—come tumbling down the slope. It gathered momentum, took to the air in a ballistic trajectory, slammed into the back of the shack.

  We stood there, stunned.

  There was a faint shudder in the fault line that ran across the bottom of the overhang, then it suddenly seemed the crest of the hill was reconfiguring itself, mid-air.

  Jet spat some words. From the tone, a rough translation might have been ‘Holy fuck!’

  I set off running.

  She was a better judge of landslides than me: she was Tibetan, after all. I felt her grab my arm.

  ‘No!’ she screamed.

  She began to run towards the approaching rock storm. A black boulder was leading the charge, advancing in mighty leaps and bounds. One of the leaps took it over our heads.

  Had Jet taken leave of her senses?

  Then I realised she was weaving her way to the only conceivable shelter we had time to reach: Doc’s iron carport.

  We dived inside, rolled into the lee of the Cruiser, clutched each other in terror as the full force of the barrage struck with a roar to wake the dead. It smashed into the roof, bombarded walls and beams, scythed out over the ground I’d have been caught cold on if she hadn’t drawn me here.

  The building shuddered and shook—and seemed to hold.

  The roar died down almost as quickly as it had come.

  I peered out through a blanket of blinding dust. ‘Is it over?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She lay beside me, her face aglitter with crushed mica, her sharp nose dusty.

  Suddenly she leaned forward, kissed me.

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

  She smiled. ‘A celebration.’

  ‘Of…?’

  ‘Survival.’

  We climbed out from under Cockburn’s car. I was relieved to see that it hadn’t sustained any further damage. I looked up at the groaning roof.

  ‘Is that going to hold?’

  She followed my gaze. ‘Maybe…’

  A trickle of dust fell into her face.

  ‘Maybe not.’ She dived out into the open air.

  Just as I followed suit the centre post snapped and a mass of jumbled rocks and blocks fell through the roof and crushed the vehicle.

  We picked ourselves out of the dirt, dusted off, gazed at the chaos, dismayed: cabin and carport were gone, reduced to rubble. We were pretty well reduced to rubble ourselves. Doc’s rock formation had disappeared, Jet’s sculpture along with it, buried under god knows how many tons of rock—as we would have been, if not for our solid steel carapace.

  The mob from the pub—June, Sandy the barman, a few early customers—came running over to lend a hand. Noel Redman, not so big on the hand-lending thing, lagged suspiciously behind.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked June.

  ‘We’re fine,’ I replied. ‘Bloody lucky,’ I added, nodding at the obliterated buildings.

  But we weren’t all fine, and we hadn’t all been lucky. The publican, poking about the wreckage, emerged with the body of his dog, whose yapping days were done. Stiff no more—well, maybe for a wee bit more; then it would be all wriggling worms for Stiffy.

  Redman shot a hostile glare in my direction, went off to bury his little mate.

  Don’t blame me, I said to myself. I didn’t squash the mongrel; and it would have been justifiable canicide if I had.

  June took us over to the pub, administered heavy doses of hot tea and cold beer—the outback panacea—each of which I willingly accepted. Jet opted for the packet of tea she kept in the Transit van, brewed up, joined me on the veranda. She sat and stared at the carnage of the cabin, her gaze growing sharper by the second.

  ‘Cunt-faced fucking dingoes,’ she said at last.

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Nice to see you picking up the vernacular. Who are you talking about?’

  She hawked, spat viciously.

  ‘They change their faces and colours from time to time, rearrange the disguise, but underneath, they are the same, no?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You heard it?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ I replied, reluctant to admit, even to myself, what I’d heard: the muffled explosion before the rock fall.

  I sighed quietly.

  Why was everything so complicated?

  Landslides happen all the time in this steep, rocky country; they’re a natural phenomenon.

  This one wasn’t.

  I took a look at the car park: I hadn’t noticed any red-bearded bastard who looked like he’d answer to the name ‘Blent’ among our rescuers, but the Pig’s Head had disappeared.

  ‘Sound like you’re speaking from personal experience there, Jet.’

  She took a noisy swig of tea, stared ahead, glowering.

  ‘Met a few dingoes in your time?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Jet?’

  I gave up, rolled a smoke. She seemed mesmerised by the movement of my fingers, the tobacco twist, the crackling paper.

  ‘Dirty custom,’ she commented.

  ‘This from a woman who works with mud?’

  ‘My father habit as well.’

  ‘Mud?’

  ‘Smoke.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘My father is quiet man, you understand? Peace.’ The words came out of her slowly. ‘Carpenter in a fox-fur hat.’

  Was I about to get some blood out of the stone?

  ‘Work with hands: the long saw, the strip of wood. Doesn’t want nun for daughter—but accept. Artist less. But accept. After nunnery, I go home, work in family house—by lake near city. Lake of souls, you know?’

  ‘Souls?’

  ‘You should understand. Lake is…voice of deity.’

  ‘Sort of a sacred site?’

  ‘Perhaps. In my country, like yours, many such place. But also army, riding in hard cars and carrying guns. Bring their weapons and poisons: test bombs, radiation, rubbish. Chinese.’ She leaned forward, hawked and spat again, across the railing. ‘Invisible sickness and death spread through lake to fish, then to the hunters of fish; nuns protest. Governor—Mister Xing—answer with gun: many nuns beaten, or jail, or run away.’

  An acid smile cut into the contours of her face.

  ‘In city square statue of Chairman Mao Zedong; symbol of harmony between our great peoples. One night I ride into town, carry my tools. In morning, crowds gather and laugh so hard they split the sides: chairman’s arse transform to face of Governor Xing.’

  She stared into her teacup, savouring the memory. ‘I watch from the hills, hiding, no find. But they recognise my hand, I am known. So my father they take to labour camp. In one month, is dead. Two months, mother as well. From the grief—perhaps from shame for troublesome daughter.’

  I stared at her. Didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I take horse and chupa, ride off into th
e wind. Cross plains. Mountains. Travel in truck, bus, whatever; walk through snow to my breast. Move with deadness in my heart, with pictures and memories burning in my brain. Make way across Tibet, Nepal. With time—here.’

  I looked out at the wreckage of the cabin. In its broken walls and beams I saw an echo of the story I’d just been told.

  ‘I see.’

  She nodded to herself, studied the western plains, sniffed suspiciously. ‘There seems to be no army here…’

  ‘We’re not very big on armies.’

  ‘Public security?’

  ‘Just me.’

  ‘Puh!’ She wasn’t impressed. ‘Atomic bomb?’

  ‘Not lately. Few back in the fifties.’

  She swirled her tea, stared into it.

  ‘You have something,’ she growled. ‘Something they want.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The dingoes.’ She threw away the dregs, rose to her feet. ‘Beware.’

  She stomped across to the wreckage. I trailed after.

  She picked her way back into the shack, salvaged her boots and a set of chisels from the rubble. Fossicked around some more, dragged aside a pulverised table, came across a dust-covered folio. She brushed and blew away the debris, found a few of her sketches, lined them up against the rocks. Scrutinised them with a fierce eye.

  Then she began picking up pieces of rubble, examining them, fitting them together, laying them out in front of the shack.

  ‘What are you doing, Jet?’

  She paused, a big rock in her little hands, the biceps in her skinny arms surprisingly curved: ‘I finish what I begin.’

  What Doc began too, I thought.

  I worked alongside her for a couple of hours, gathering up rocks and rubble, laying them out in a rough approximation of Doc’s original. Jet did the arranging, issued orders, worked quickly and efficiently.

  Finally the heat drove us up onto the pub veranda. We were sitting there, feet on the railing, drinks in hand, when a police vehicle came rolling down the road, pulled up in front of us.

  First Griffo emerged, then Cockburn sprang out of the driver’s seat, hands on hips, gum in mouth, customary sniff hovering about the nose. His gaze zeroed in on me.

  ‘Emily.’

  ‘Sir.’

  He lowered his shades at Jet but managed to keep his suspicions to himself. ‘Got a report of a rock fall.’