by Nic Low
Toff realises the workers are moving in a phalanx because they are carrying something enormous. They lower the object carefully to the ground at Archie’s feet, then peel away. There is a hot, sharp intake of breath: first from the old man, then the cops, soldiers and pensioners, and those watching live on TV across the country.
It is a gleaming slab of crystalline white quartz, prized from the earth beneath the shrine. And running through it, like a bolt of lightning frozen into the rock, is a seam of gold, as thick as Toff’s enormous thigh. Half a million bucks’ worth, at least.
For one brief moment the crowd stands in silent awe, and in that glittering pause, a microsecond before the Melbourne Rush begins, each of them feels the ripe slink of blood in their veins, and something else too, something huge and fierce, welling up inside.
SCAR
1
FAR BELOW the plane, the valley’s one road twisted through the scrub, an umbilical cord of raw red dirt. It was old gold-rush territory down there, broken and remade by hand. From the Cessna’s tiny window I watched our shadow dip and loom across the hills’ corrupted flanks. Then I saw it—the long dark slash of the mine. I’d studied the surveyor’s drawings, but from the air it looked different. The line of the cut was flanked on either side by three clearings, six in all. There was something familiar to that symmetry. I rolled the sleeve of my shirt and turned my arm to expose the veins.
Look, I shouted over the engines.
Christie lowered her pregnancy book. I pointed to the faded scar on the inside of my elbow. It was a pale line flanked on either side by three small punctures, where the doctor had fumbled the stitches almost fifty years ago.
Christie frowned behind her sunglasses. I beckoned her to the window, and she leaned across me to look. I caught her youthful scent, ripe with sweat, and I was glad I’d asked her to come. It was a work trip, a long one. We were trying for a child.
Do you see that? I yelled in her ear.
She looked out at the mine’s pattern on the land, then back at my scar. Strange, she yelled. What do you think it means?
Nothing. Coincidence.
How’d you get it?
School. Going down a slide. Bolt.
I mimed the head of the rusty bolt slicing the vein. Christie pulled a face.
Buckle up, the pilot shouted. Here we go.
The plane sank down among the treetops. We bumped along the landing paddock and came to rest beside a dusty LandCruiser. The pilot opened the hatch and folded out the steps, and the warm drone of the bush flooded in. Christie tied back her tangled black hair. She stepped down and stretched, and my eyes grazed the smooth olive jut of her hips where her top rode up. Behind his mirrored aviators the pilot was staring as well. He’d been flirting all day, trying to guess: was she part Spanish or Aboriginal or what?
There’s no one here, Christie said. The truck’s empty.
Sorry, darl, I should have warned you, the pilot said. They had an outbreak of the plague round here.
Right, Christie said, but she wasn’t really listening.
I stepped down into the heat. We’d only left Perth an hour ago, but already the city felt a world away. Six cows watched us from the end of the paddock. Beyond was the olive and gold of the bush, clicking and singing to itself.
I walked to the truck. There were keys in the ignition, and a note on the dashboard.
It’s okay, I called. The surveyor got called into town. The truck’s ours for the month. He’s left directions.
From the airstrip we drove back up the valley through stands of fledgling karri gums. Fingers of light strummed across the truck. When we got to Enmore, Christie stepped down and looked to the scattering of empty houses, and the scrub and hills that rose beyond.
Christ, that’s not a village, she said. There’s not even a pub. Nothing.
There’s the mine.
There’s the collapsed mine.
We’ll see. I nodded at the parched playing field beside the road. What about cricket?
She turned and her smile was brilliant. There’s no one else to play with, mister. It’s perfect. We’ve got nothing else to do.
For a whole month.
Better get started, then. The book says now’s the best time.
I came round to her side of the truck and kissed her. She looked up at me and I placed my hand on her stomach, then eased it down between her thighs. Her eyes half closed.
Sometimes these things make me feel young. Sometimes they make me feel like a dirty old man.
It was sunset when we pulled into the steep driveway. The company had rented us the house, a bungalow fronted by huge windows overlooking an arc of scrubby hills. There wasn’t a neighbour in sight.
I killed the engine, and the playful squabble of parrots sounded in the trees above. Someone had built a rough rock cairn atop the slope to the west. Christie stepped from the truck and climbed towards it. She stopped abruptly.
Oh, Christ. Look at this.
I clambered after her and drew up short. The ground cleaved open before us, dropping sharply into the cut of the mine. Bands of silver greys and ochre stains ran down towards the floor. The bottom lay deep in shadow, but I could make out the debris from the collapse.
My god, I said. I didn’t know the house would be so close.
Christie looked from the mine back to the clearing that held our new home. Show me your arm, she said. Show me that scar again.
I turned my arm to the day’s last light. She placed her finger over the first puncture mark below the line of the scar.
It’s a map, she said. This one’s us.
2
At seven on Monday I pulled myself away from Christie’s gentle breathing. I scoured the tang of sex from my skin, shaved and walked to meet the surveyor at the mouth of the mine. A faint mist trapped the sun between the trees. I was pleased to hear my boots upon the road, and to see parrots launch their bodies through the air, and to know that Christie, lying warm inside the house, might already be pregnant. I’d spent my youth in fear of procreation. I could barely comprehend this new pleasure, to hold her close and shut my eyes and let life flow unhindered. I wore my shirt half unbuttoned under my high-vis vest and did not care if I looked foolish.
I reached the road at the bottom of the gully and then the mouth of the open-cut mine. One side remained sheer. The other had collapsed utterly, its viscera spilled onto the floor. Among rocks the size of cars, mature trees reached for the light. I stood and studied the mess.
Just on eight the surveyor pulled up. He was very young. He had a clean-shaven, undercooked face and an ambitious handshake that made me embarrassed for him.
Morning, I said. I’m Steven.
Pete. Sorry about Saturday—I got called away. You guys settle in all right?
I nodded. Thanks. Great place. I hadn’t realised we’d be so close.
Yeah, the only houses round here are on mining land.
We saw the clearings from the plane. Neighbours?
Nah, Pete said. Ruins mostly. They were all bought from the mine by the one family but they’re gone now. Not much missed,
either.
So it’s just us?
Yeah. The cave-in finished the town. Everyone left for Kal.
And that was—?
Nineteen sixteen. Have a look at this.
Pete returned to his ute and fetched an old black-and-white photo of the mine before the collapse. The cut was narrow and twice as deep as now, its dark expanse latticed with props fashioned from whole trees. A crew of serious-faced men looked from their century into ours.
Lot of men working that, I said.
It was a miracle no one was hurt. Happened on a Sunday. All the old machinery’s still down there.
And you live locally?
Market Road. Family’s been here forever. My grandparents still talk about getting this place reopened.
Well, it doesn’t look—I said, but then I saw the expression on Pete’s face. It doesn’t look easy, but we’ve got a month to figure it out.
Pete nodded slowly. So, is that your daughter you’ve come with?
I stared at the man, but there was no malice in his eyes. If anything, a trace of bovine hope. I felt embarrassed again, and that made me spiteful.
Yes, I said. My daughter.
Nice. Family time?
Family time. Let’s get started.
When I got back to the house that afternoon there were six .22 calibre bullets of faded brass strewn across the kitchen table. Someone had cut the tips off with a hacksaw.
Christie, I called. Christie?
The sliding door to the bathroom rolled open. Christie was wearing running shoes and shorts, and an old T-shirt of mine she’d shrunk in the wash, the week she moved into my place in Mandera. Her face was glowing. Hi, she said.
Where did these come from?
I found them in an old ute. Why are they like that?
Do more damage. Where’s the ute?
You want to go for a walk?
We strolled down to the road among slender saplings the colour of ash. Blackberry sprawled from the ditches. The track went past our lone letterbox and climbed the other side.
Christie held my hand. How’d you go today? she said.
Not too bad. Pete’s a nice-enough bloke. It doesn’t look good for the mine, though. The lateral subsistence is much worse than they made out.
What’d Pete say?
I shrugged. The locals are all keen to make it work… You know, he asked if you were my daughter.
Christie groaned. What’d you tell him?
I said you were.
Christie pulled her hand away and rabbit-punched me in the shoulder. You’re kidding, right? She looked me in the eye. Steven! What the hell for?
I don’t know. Avoiding small-town gossip? I’m more than twice your age.
That’s not avoiding gossip! What if he saw us kissing on the road?
What if he saw me do this?
Stop it, she said. Stop it.
Through the trees I caught a glimpse of white. We broke from the track and stepped over a collapsing fence of hand-cut posts. The ute sat ringed by slag heaps and the telltale humps of open shafts.
There, Christie said. The bullets were in the glove box.
The ute had no plates and the ignition had been hotwired. A scribbled nest of leaves and string lay on the driver’s seat. The bonnet was up, and someone had prised the serial plate from the engine block. I looked around at the destroyed landscape and the rusted car and Christie standing with my T-shirt fitted tight across her breasts. I pressed myself to her.
All those bullets, I said. Great place to make a mess.
You know, old man, you don’t perform and I’ll throw you down a mineshaft.
I laughed, and tried to sit Christie on the tailgate of the ute. It was just the right height.
Quit it, she said. You have to tell Pete I’m not your daughter.
I nodded, caressing the back of her neck. Of course. I’ll tell him first thing.
You better. What do you think happened here?
No idea.
Do you think this is one of the clearings? The ones we saw from the air?
I stepped back and looked reluctantly down the hill. Yes, I said. I rolled up my sleeve and looked at the scar. The second one. Here.
That’s so weird, Christie said. I wonder what it means?
Who cares? Right now I have to get you home.
3
The next day we rose early to go for a walk before I started work. Christie wanted to find the third clearing. The day’s first light brushed the tops of the gums with gold. In a terracotta birdbath beside the front path a pair of nimble honeyeaters splashed and flapped and then were gone among the leaves.
I like it here, I said. You don’t get that in Mandera.
I guess, Christie said.
What do you mean, you guess?
It’s so quiet. Especially when you’re away at work. It’s a bit freaky.
A bit freaky? You’ll get used to it.
Sometimes I speak to Christie as if she were a school girl.
We followed the same track as the day before. Old rain had washed deep channels through the dirt, and here and there spines of rock surfaced from the deep. I pointed them out to Christie.
Basalt, I said. Six million years old. Granite. Three billion years.
If we have a boy, Christie said, let’s call him Granite.
Do you think you might already be pregnant? I couldn’t stop myself asking.
Jeez! she said, laughing. Is it that urgent?
I thought of the need to procreate that had seized my friends over the decades. The women first, then the men, maddened by the desire to breed. In my work, time was measured in millions of years. Against that slow patience of stone the need to reproduce had always seemed like vanity. Then I met Christie, and I felt my slackened skin beneath her hand, and I saw that the real vanity was my own. I had not thought to have children because I had not thought that I would die.
We reached a saddle and began to descend. Down in the trees I saw the pale silver eye of a tin roof. A small house of tawny stone lay in the third clearing, bordered by marshy ground ripe with the prints of roos. The house had empty sockets in place of doors and windows. Its garden had long ago drowned in a sea of gorse.
Hello, Christie called softly. Anyone home?
We stood and listened, and there was no sound. Christie walked ahead and entered the house, calling as she went. I followed her onto a rough dirt floor and let my eyes adjust. A stack of timber stood against one wall, keeping watch over a mouse-soiled mattress. I wondered idly who had used that bed.
At the back I found a tiny bedroom, with a mezzanine built into the far wall. Above the platform a stained-glass window glowed ochre and gold in the early sun.
Look at this, I called.
Christie came up behind me and put her arms around my waist.
It’s the only thing they finished, she said wistfully. It’s beautiful. Maybe we could finish the rest f
or them.
It wouldn’t take much, I said. It’s quiet, though. Not too freaky for you?
No. I wonder why they never finished it?
Because they were hippies.
Steven.
Because things happen, I said. People make plans that don’t work out.
Christie was quiet. Then she said, Do you think this will work out?
What, this house?
No, this. She took my hand and placed it on her belly.
I thought of all the plans I had made and dropped before Christie was even born. I thought of her plans to finish her degree and travel, and how readily I had accepted their abandonment. I thought of my mother, meeting Christie for the first time: how she’d held her knife and fork like she didn’t know what they were for, and how her face was confused and brave and shamed, and how her shame at times became my own. I thought of my father’s joking that he wanted me to father a grandchild, not marry one. My friends who would not meet my eye, and those too keen to meet Christie’s. Her own family, somewhere up in the Pilbara, unmet, unknown, never discussed; just the freight of their history within her youthful frame.
We had only known each other a year. The pull of that year had been strong. But to the stones of this house and the shoals of rock that ran beneath, the pull of that year meant nothing.
Will it work out?
Why not, I said. Then, more forcefully, Yes.
4
Christie woke me on Saturday with coffee and a week-old newspaper saved from Perth. The sun was long up. We sat in its heat with our shirts off. I looked to the sweet curved shadows below Christie’s breasts, and soon was kneeling by her side to lick at her nipples. I tasted the sharp scent of coffee on my breath and her morning warmth, and felt her hand in my hair.
