Stone Country

by Nicole Alexander

  They headed east, sharing food and fires and stories of what they’d done. Hart listened quietly and rarely asked questions. Ross tended to exaggerate the little good he’d been party to and omitted details from his yarns when they became sticky with wrongdoing, so the versions the boy ended up hearing became narratives that belonged to a better man.

  Nearly twenty years separated them. Hart had limited knowledge of the war or of what it meant to be a coward, except in terms of being ready for a fistfight. He wasn’t partial to women due to a girl he’d liked who’d died of smallpox. And he hardly cared for where a person had come from or who their family was. Rather, Hart talked about where a man might go and what he could do, given the opportunity. Ross admired his hopefulness and decided against setting the boy straight.

  Sand dunes and scrubby plains, anthills and sentinel termite mounds, rocky outcrops and salt lakes. Ross had seen the best and the worst of man and country while his skin cracked like aged cowhide and his legs became bowed from gripping the flanks of his horse. He’d driven himself until hours meant nothing and day and night became one. There were times when he’d sunk so low that carcass-putrid water nearly ended the odyssey for him, when men grew sick of his gnarly tongue and bashed him to a stupor, where he was an outsider among outsiders and he began to find solidarity among sinkholes, death adders and predatory birds. The things that scared others offered him a sort of belonging. So it was strange that being in Hart’s company somehow made the days better.

  Then, one morning, the horse Hart rode had shied at a snake. The boy had come unsaddled, and landed in the dust near the agitated serpent. It was as ordinary as that. Ross was quick to place a ligature above the bite on the boy’s leg to stop the poison’s progress, but the last few hours spent slackening the leather strap on the boy’s skinny leg hadn’t lessened the severity of the symptoms. Gently loosening the strap above Hart’s knee and retying it, Ross made shallow knife incisions across the snake bite. The cuts overlapped the previous welts he’d cut into the boy’s skin, the area burnt by the Condy’s crystals he’d applied. Ross doubted the potassium-based concoction would help.

  Hart was propped up beneath a rocky overhang painted with tawny outlines of animals and people. He drank from the waterbag as Ross worked. ‘You know what you’re doing, mate. I could’ve died.’ His speech was slow.

  Ross didn’t answer. A small abscess was forming over the wound which, combined with Hart’s continuing tiredness, suggested that it would be up to the kid if he were to pull through. Ross lifted a trouser leg, revealing a scarred calf.

  ‘Are they both bites?’ asked Hart.

  ‘Nope. That’s from a lancewood tree. Come dry season, when it sheds, the branches are hard and pointed. I’ve seen a man impaled on them.’ Ross stretched the skin on his leg, showing another injury where a lump was missing from his flesh. ‘This one is. He got me near Wild Man River but I was fortunate to be with someone who knew what to do. Not sure I needed a chunk cut out of me but I survived so I’m not complaining. You will too. Wish it.’

  ‘My mother used to say that. Make a wish and maybe, one day.’ The boy’s poison-addled eyes were fixed on the drawing of a fish on the rock above. ‘Funny, isn’t it? How they draw the insides as well. Like they can see the bones.’

  ‘Gives them something to do, I suppose,’ answered Ross.

  ‘How come we never see them?’

  ‘They’re out there.’ During the dry seasons in the snarled back country, where a slurp of water was worth a life, Ross became aware of the Aboriginal warriors trailing him. ‘Friendly’ remained a loose term when they dragged unseen spears between their toes. Staying away from their women, he kept his rifle handy and always gave out tobacco before moving on, regardless of whether it was deserved. He’d come out of the worst of it with a waddy in the small of his back and a limp that would be with him for life.

  ‘I should be right to ride soon,’ said Hart, his skin shiny with perspiration. ‘Thanks RG.’ His eyelids fluttered as he rested.

  That was the name Ross used. Two letters that meant everything and nothing. Next to him, Hart gave a nod of gratitude to match his words. Ross wasn’t used to appreciation, in any form. He watched the boy carefully. Hart depended on him. Asked him things. As if Ross knew how to live life properly. Sometimes at night when the boy snored and Ross lay awake, he gave thought to what it would be like to have a son. He figured Hart was the closest he’d ever get to that and he was grateful.

  ‘We’ll have to get going today,’ Ross told him. Another twelve hours wouldn’t make much difference, and at least if they were moving Hart would have something else to fix his mind on. Before the snake bite Hart had been enthusiastic for a kid, but maybe Ross been like that at that age too.

  ‘Do you like horseracing?’ asked Ross. The boy slept.

  One day, in the past, northwards of Lake Eyre a speck changed shape in the distance. Ross lifted his head, flopping the brim of his hat, which had torn from the crown, and peered through the gap of rabbit pelt. The next day, more figures could be seen in front and behind. Like trailing fly-spots spoiling a surface. He wasn’t expecting to see many people on the road. They in comparison were keen to gather in like woolly lambs traversing a great expanse to a single watering point. Ross reluctantly merged with riders, overland travellers and fly-blown camels crossing the border near Charlotte Waters, from the south into the Territory.

  ‘You going to the Alice, then?’ said a squashed-nosed man who’d taken up the space next to Ross when there were hundreds of miles available. ‘I am. Trying my luck at the races. The stakes are five hundred quid. Five hundred. I’ll give it a go. You from Oodnadatta?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Ross.

  ‘Adelaide then? You look like you’ve come a-ways.’

  ‘You riding that horse in a race?’ asked Ross, taking in the youth of the gelding. He’d probably been cut too early, leaving no time to grow out. ‘Fine-boned and flighty. You won’t do any good with him.’

  ‘Hey. How the hell would you know? Look at that piece of scruffy horse-flesh you’re sitting on. Why the only thing it’s good for is couch-stuffing.’

  Ross smacked the man in the face and the stranger fell from the saddle. ‘Come on, Nugget. Don’t you take any notice.’

  He squared closer to the telegraph line, keeping his attention on the single wire suspended from the top of the pole. Eventually the choice needed to be made of whether to go left or right. Ahead lay Darwin. A ranging eight hundred miles or so.

  Ross veered westwards, guided by a dry riverbed, which furrowed up behind them like a canoe’s wake. The sand made for heavy going and he wrestled Nugget clear of the powder, the pastel pinks and golden tinges of the McDonnell Ranges beckoning in the distance. It was there that the carcasses of the caterpillars lay. The ancestors of the old people of this land. The spaces in the hills showed where they had fought the enemy and had their heads bitten off during the battle. Ross reckoned he knew what that was like.

  He kept moving on until lack of light forced him to stop. He made a fire and tipped water into his hat for Nugget to drink, wishing he’d made for the Alice. He was skint. And while being broke wasn’t so bad out bush, a bit of flour and salt wouldn’t have gone amiss. Mostly he existed on one meal and a glug of rum a day and, if need be, could go for seven before the weakness set in. So a ride down the straight at the Alice could have been an opportunity.

  A few years ago he’d met up with a man called Joe Davies at Katherine. They’d won a pile at the races, Ross riding Nugget and Joe laying bets. They blew the winnings in a week but not before he’d procured a new saddle and blanket for Nugget and a set of clothes for himself and kept enough for the odd bottle of rum. Horseracing. It was a cattle-king pastime in the dead centre of Australia, a way to make a quid if you owned a stripling like Nugget and didn’t mind people. Which Ross now did.

  Except for Joe. Joe said what he meant. He was a ringer from Queensland who’d taken to buffalo hunting and Ross
had already done one season with him, shooting the beasts for their horn and hide. He was to join Joe again very soon in the northeast. God willing. He’d not mentioned this potential job to Hart before, partly because he’d not expected the boy to stay with him for so long, nor could he be sure that Joe would welcome a young stranger.

  Hart was awake again. ‘Have you ever been buffalo hunting?’ asked Ross.

  ‘No. But I could learn.’

  Ross walked to the edge of the rock shelter, flicking his blade back and forth on his shirtsleeve to clean it. The lowlands stretched below. A vibrant green mat of rain-pooled land trimmed with the resinous smell of drying grasses and fringed by pandanus palms. Sheer sandstone ridges several hundred feet in height extended southwards, while in the east they dropped away to the valley below. The crude map in Ross’s pocket outlined the Magela Plain and Cannon Hill. They lay before him. New way-markers on a trail with an unknown end. Ross planned to reunite with Joe Davies’s outfit downstream from the river, crossing near the Oenpelli Mission, and do a season of hunting. They’d formed a tight partnership three years ago when they’d met by chance at the top end of the Mary River but Ross refused to stay on for another year. The past was a jagged reminder of what it meant to trust someone.

  ‘Is it far?’ asked Hart.

  Ross recalled Mick’s description. ‘Remember that hole in the rock we rode through? Well, that’s step one. Out there is part of the plain we ride across to get to the East Alligator River, and eventually we’ll reach the place where the blacks speak something different.’

  ‘So you haven’t been there?’

  ‘Not there, no.’ Hart was one of the few people he’d known who didn’t feel the need to empty his mouth by the minute. Ross appreciated that in a person. Words were useful but they wore out quickly. ‘We’ll have to make a move soon.’ He cupped water from a rocky pool edged by ferns and drank. Stains on the rock’s surface showed where run-off drains had already dried. There would be more water at the base of the hill.

  ‘I think we’re near Waybell Station,’ commented Hart. ‘It’s the last place before stone country. You heard about the owner who up and disappeared? Real mystery.’

  ‘I’m not from around here,’ answered Ross. ‘I told you that.’

  ‘Sure. I just thought you might have heard. Happened a while back. I was a kid myself then, but there was a real stink about it. My father said he had money. Pots of it.’

  Ross left a small amount of tobacco on the ground. Then he shouldered Hart, and the boy hobbled towards the horses.

  ‘Who’s that for?’ asked the boy.

  ‘That outcrop was someone’s home. Best to thank them, eh?’

  Behind them an Aboriginal man appeared from the direction of the rock overhang. Naked except for a small string bag tied about his neck and bands of scarlet ochre dotted with white, he stood quite still leaning on a long spear. Finally, he walked over and picked up the tobacco and then disappeared.

  Chapter 44

  They passed red paintings on a rock face. Long-limbed stick-figures that could have been running or swimming, Ross couldn’t decide.

  ‘They give me the creeps,’ said the boy.

  ‘They’re mimi,’ Ross told him. ‘Spirits.’

  ‘You mean like ghosts?’

  ‘I don’t know rightly,’ replied Ross. ‘Down south I saw bright lights once or twice. They came out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly. The bloke I worked for called them mimi lights. Reckoned an old blackfella called them spirit people. That some were good and some were bad. I guess it’s better if you can’t tell.’

  Hart nodded. ‘I suppose.’

  It was hard going crossing the plains. They rode through dense palm trees and shoulder-high grass, trying to avoid the green carpet of weed, which floated above the waterholes hiding boggy pits and crocodiles. Some of the land was already burnt, the savage decaying growth of the wet season razed by the local Aboriginal population so that fresh young shoots would appear. The fires were eventually put out by the rivers, creeks and the numerous waterholes that crisscrossed the grasslands.

  They made camp at the base of a hill, in a cave filled with animal bones. Their fire threw spluttering light onto painted walls drawn vivid with stencilled palms and tall-hatted men with rifles. Ross swigged from a bottle of rum, treasuring each gulp. He knew it should be saved. That to drink it all in one go would condemn him within a day to violent sweats and uncontrollable shaking. That was the worst of being unable to live without alcohol. Ross undid the ligature on Hart’s leg and then retied it.

  ‘It looks better,’ said Ross, lifting his gaze from the festering bite to where Hart tongued at a capful of water. ‘Couple of days, you’ll be good as new.’

  The boy nodded and lay back, exhausted.

  Outside, Ross scratched around for kindling. Nugget snorted, edging closer to the shelter. Ross set the wood near the resting boy and scraped his knife on stone until a spark finally took.

  ‘You hungry, Hart?’ But the boy was asleep.

  Ross stood at the mouth of the cave and held up the rum bottle. Brittle light from a waning moon revealed it to be half-empty. He’d not planned on going near the Oenpelli Mission. Venturing back into real society was not something he was at all keen to do. Ross was better out in the bush where there were no expectations constraining him, but Hart wasn’t getting better. The boy needed to stay put and either recover or at least be able to spend his final days with better care than Ross could offer. But he knew the company of white men would lead to questions he couldn’t answer. The choice played in his mind.

  Wedging his swag until it fitted in the hollow of his back, Ross emptied the saddlebag, lining up the contents in the dirt. Quart-pot, tea, the last of his tobacco, rifle shells, fishing line, and the book he now had difficulty reading, The Twelve Labours of Hercules, both due to the missing pages and failing vision. His eyesight had begun deteriorating earlier that year. ‘Here’s to us, Nugget.’ He swigged the rum and swigged again until it was empty, feeling bereft by the finishing of it.

  Ross held the bottle by the neck, envisaging another flagon years ago, one filled with sunset rum, and the man who’d poured that first pannikin. Sowden.

  ‘Makes some men mad and kills others,’ Ross muttered to himself, recalling Maria’s warning, his voice tumbling into the dark. He thought of her hand on his chest as she sat by his side in the rain that long-ago morning. Then he lay down in the sand as the alcohol took effect, reflecting on the places he’d been and what he’d done after Waybell. After Maria. Brawls had been often and vicious. Not much was needed to rile a man in places where it took more spine to survive than stand upwards, and Ross had grown adept at irritation. A bitterness had leeched its way inside of him. He wasn’t good with people anymore and he wasn’t any better alone. But he was trying with Hart.

  Women had tended some of his injuries and slept with Ross when they’d felt inclined. Mostly he didn’t remember them. Except in terms of relief, when he couldn’t get his stomach filled with grog. Between times he chopped wood, saddled drover’s horses and searched for water. Always moving on, taking one road and then another as had the explorers of old, except this expedition had no end.

  There were turning points in a person’s life, and his were dotted unceremoniously across a spate of years that made him feel shrivelled by time. It made the original romance of Waybell, the dream shared by two brothers, pathetically ignorant. All of it was. Women, love, new land. Settlers’ dreams rarely touched the truth of life up North. Ross knew that now.

  The night was spent with the fierce crack of thunder breaking the noise of Hart’s breathing. If the boy were a dog Ross would have cut his ear and bled him at the first sign of the bite, hopeful that the pump of his heart would purge the venom from his body. Feet away, Nugget snorted at the storm. Every time Ross hooked at the reins and tried to coax the horse inside for protection, the gelding tossed its head in defiance, rain glossing the animal’s coat until it s
hone like wet coal.

  Ross woke with a start, his stomach paining and body shaking. The sun cracked through an overcast sky. Nugget gave him a hurt expression. He packed their belongings and roused a listless Hart, looping a rope around the boy’s waist, securing him to the saddle. He threw the empty bottle in the dirt, thinking of the crows he’d dreamt of during the night. This wasn’t the place to stay. He looked about at the mouth of the cave and the broken rocks and shiny plants and stared at Hart, slumped over the saddle, then he swung himself up onto Nugget’s back. After an age of trying to keep his mind still on windy days, Ross blinked and turned east. Living proved difficult, but not as difficult as trying to kill himself through drink. That took some doing.

  Chapter 45

  The horses waded through mangroves and across the muddy yellow river towards a rickety landing platform as the incoming tide swept to meet them. Waiting for them on the other side were four Aboriginal people. There was little Ross could do but make for the platform. It was the shortest, and appeared to be the shallowest, crossing and the surging tidal currents weren’t going to slow while he debated a better route. Ross’s index finger was poised curled and tight on the trigger of the rifle that lay across his thighs. Having almost crossed the river and reached the lands where men spoke something different, he didn’t fancy being the recipient of a barbed point in the flesh, or becoming crocodile prey.

  The horses struck sandy soil just as the deceptive bough shape of a crocodile sunk beneath the water. Nugget’s haunches flexed as the gelding found purchase on dry land and then drew up hard where the men stood. Each held a spear and smoked a pipe. One of the men, who had a frizzled grey beard, stepped forward and Ross picked up a mix of pigeon English and an indecipherable language, which might have been Japanese for all he understood of it.