by Karen Wood
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Lawson sniffed.
‘So . . .’
‘What?’
‘So, can I have a job?’
‘Come back and we’ll talk about it.’
Luke tightened his jaw . . . Lawson’s offer was equally an invitation back home and an attempt to boss him around. But he wasn’t a foster kid anymore and he needed to get that through to Lawson. He had said sorry and he meant it, but he wasn’t going to let Lawson tell him what to do – not unless he was paying to. ‘If I come back, it’ll be on my own terms.’
‘Don’t come back then,’ said Lawson. ‘You ring me asking for a job, and then tell me you want to state your own terms?’
‘I don’t want to state the terms of the job, I . . .’
‘You’re not family. I don’t owe you anything, kid.’
Lawson’s words stung. It was a blunt reminder. Luke wasn’t a Blake, and never would be. He was wasting his time. He felt suddenly angry, frustrated.
‘You’ve got no parents now either, Lawson.’ It was a low blow but Luke didn’t care. ‘Annie and Ryan, they’re not Blakes either. You’re just like me now, some mongrel-bred part of the mix.’ He slammed down the phone, getting in before Lawson could.
Then he stood in the phone booth fighting the urge to smash his fist through the glass. He could have yelled until he was hoarse. He’d done it again. Blown everything.
Outside the booth, he heard tyres on gravel, rolling slowly. Cops. They were sussing him out. Luke slouched into himself and sank to the ground with his hands over his head.
From over the road, Pete called loudly. ‘Hey, anyone know where the hospital is?’
The cop outside the booth answered. ‘It’s just over there, same place as always.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Right there. Up the road.’
‘Oh, sorry, officer. Can’t see. Got my eyes all cut up and I can’t see nothin’.’
‘Through the gate there.’
‘You couldn’t help me, could you? Don’t want to get hit by a car.’
The phone booth door slid open and a small hand pulled gently at Luke’s arm. ‘Come on, Dingo Luke,’ whispered Toby. ‘We gotta go, cops everywhere.’
They hopped through backyards until they could make a break for the creek. Then they ran until they found Bob in his ute, waiting for them a couple of kays out of town.
‘Can we go past the showgrounds?’ asked Luke. ‘I want to see my brumbies.’
‘Your brumbies?’ Bob raised his sunnies and looked at him. ‘You still haven’t worked out what you’re gonna do?’
‘I can’t just leave them there. They’ll get dogged.’
‘They’ll get dogged anyway, bro,’ said Bob. ‘You heard what I said: big cull coming up.’
‘I’ve got to at least give them a chance.’
‘A chance at what?’
Luke sighed. Bob was right. They had no chance. He thought of Rusty, slammed up against the brown mare, whinnying and snapping his gums. Then he imagined him being heli-mustered again, or shot and left wounded for dingos to finish off. He knew he should just leave him, but he couldn’t. ‘Can we just do a drive-by?’
Bob groaned, did a U-turn and headed towards the showgrounds. ‘You better get down – if there’s cops there they’ll pull me up for sure.’ He glanced across the front of the ute. ‘You too, Toby.’
Luke curled onto the floor of the ute and Toby lay down on the front seat. After a while Luke felt the vehicle slow and turn. He heard gravel under the tyres and cattle bellowing in the distance, truck engines and people yelling.
‘Cops are here.’ Bob immediately put the ute into reverse. Luke poked his head up and scanned around. Two uniformed police were walking along the road.
‘Stay down,’ growled Bob.
‘You’re leaving!’
‘Course I’m leaving. You want them gubbas to take you back in?’
‘What about the brumbies?’ Luke shot his head above the dashboard. Behind the cars and trucks, the yards still bustled with livestock. He caught a quick glimpse of some horses, all ears and swishing tails, brown and red and black, still struggling against their surrounds. And then they were gone. Bob backed straight out of the front gate and onto the highway.
‘Lawson give you a job?’ asked Bob as he put the ute into top gear.
‘Nup.’
Bob gave a fleeting frown, as if surprised. ‘So what are you doing? You going back?’
Luke didn’t answer.
‘I’m going back to the crossing to get my gear, then I’m leaving.’ Bob lifted his sunnies off his nose and turned to him. ‘They’re your mob, Luke. You’re a big boy now, a man. You gotta look after them.’
‘I can’t do that without a job.’
‘So go and get one.’
Back at the crossing, Luke shoved his pitifully few belongings into his pack, hoisted it onto his shoulder and stood looking at the river. As he waded through the water, something inside him crossed over. He wasn’t the same person he had been when he first came to this river. He would be all right on his own now. He reached the other side, stopped and looked back. It flowed slowly and serenely, turquoise-blue and achingly beautiful.
‘Moonstone Crossing, I’ll call you,’ he said, ‘because you gave me beautiful dreams.’
As the red hills rolled by, Luke sat in the front of the ute and thought of the brumbies. Maybe some of them would survive the big cull, join other survivors and build up new herds. They would find their place within the mob. As for his brumbies, Brownie, Rusty and the fillies, there was no mob out in the hills to look after them anymore. Chocky and the other colts were now the property of a rodeo contractor. As for the old red stallion, Luke could only guess that something awful had happened to him. And he knew the moment Brownie lay down to foal, the wild dogs would be all over her. It would be kinder to let her be destroyed humanely. And Rusty, did he ever have a chance?
Luke laid his head back against the seat and let the soothing voice float out of the stereo and wrap around his soul. For the first time in a long while he allowed himself to think of his foster father from years ago: his swinging fists, his dark, ugly nature, and the damage he had done. Luke ran his hands over his ribs and wished he could forget what he even looked like.
He spun around and peered through the back window to check on the two pups and groaned. Filth was heaving something horrible all over Bob’s saddle. Luke had buried the fish guts away from the camp so the pups couldn’t get at them, but they must have dug them up.
Bob sang quietly beside him.
Roads through many faiths / the journey’s not unknown / all go to one place / they take my spirit home.
A roadside servo was the first stop to welcome them back to Mount Isa.
‘Sure this is what you want?’ asked Bob.
Luke nodded. ‘Just let me out up here.’
Bob leaned across the bench seat as Luke released his seatbelt. He held out his hand. ‘See you round, ay, bro?’
‘You bet,’ said Luke, giving it a shake that he hoped conveyed the gratitude and respect he felt. He looked Bob in the eye. ‘Thanks.’
He whistled up the pups, and set off on foot towards Mount Isa.
24
LUKE WALKED ALONG the road, dust-caked suburban sprawl on one side of him and a huge copper mine on the other. Filth and Fang bitterly resented the ropes around their necks and had to be dragged all the way.
Closer to town he came across a large saddlery, a small art gallery, an op shop and a fancy-looking cafe with people sipping lattes and forking salads. When he reached the pub in the centre of town, he sat on a public seat outside and took a breather.
A job: somehow he had to find one without getting involved with Centrelink. He looked down the road at the huge smokestacks towering over the mine and wondered where the head office might be. He’d heard that mining jobs paid great money, but how could he apply for a job without any sort of reference or résumé, let alon
e any ID?
He looked at the cars angle-parked along the kerb. Big white four-wheel drives, most of them, with government number plates. Or big utes. Small sedans wouldn’t last long on the rough roads out here. A four-wheel drive cruiser rolled into an empty spot and two men in dirty hats got out. Luke watched them walk to the front door of the pub and disappear inside. Those were the sort of people he should ask. Ringers.
It was early afternoon. The pub was quiet. He tied the pups to the seat and decided to give it a go.
A waft of cool deodorised air hit him in the face as he pulled the big-handled doors open. Ch-ching pokie noises, clinking glass, quiet murmurs of conversation interspersed with outbreaks of laughter. It was a large pub, but almost empty.
A six-foot-six bouncer in a bow tie stood glaring down at him. ‘Got ID, mate?’
Luke looked up at him. ‘You got to be kidding me.’
The bouncer shrugged an enormous shoulder.
‘I’ve just got to talk to those blokes over there.’ Luke pointed at the ringers.
‘Hey, Mac, you know this bloke?’
A man in his sixties looked up from under his hat. He wore a spotless collared shirt and was freshly shaven. He gave Luke no more than a second’s glance and then turned back to his associate without answering.
The bouncer pointed to the door.
‘I’ll be real quick,’ said Luke. ‘Please.’
The hulking man stepped in front of Luke and folded his arms across his chest. ‘I don’t think they want to be interrupted.’ Behind him, the men took long swallows of beer and continued talking.
Luke backed out of the doorway then turned and walked back to the bench seat, only to find it occupied by two women and several noisy kids, all yelling and arguing over Filth and Fang. He dragged the pups across the road and plonked himself on the edge of a raised garden bed. Through the tinted windows of the pub he could see the two men talking. He’d been wrong; they couldn’t be ringers. Cattle barons, more like it.
The daylight began to fade. Luke still sat, staring into the pub. It had filled with more people and the rise and fall of voices overflowed into the street. A woman from the cafe came out and gave a bowl of water to the dogs. People passed him, many looking worse off than he. Aboriginal people, heaps of them, suddenly filled the streets. A woman with a heavily bruised face stalked along with several other women in single file behind her, small children cradled in their arms. The men were unshaven, angry-looking. They weren’t like Tyson or Bob or Pete. They didn’t look him in the eye or acknowledge him; somehow they seemed utterly unapproachable. Fang growled at almost every person who went past.
‘Money day,’ a woman said, as she walked toward him. She was a big woman, dressed in golden scarves like a gypsy. Her hips, wrapped in a tasselled red sarong, swung from side to side as she walked. She looked Luke over lightning-quick. ‘First night in the Isa?’
Luke nodded, feeling annoyed by his inability to look a bit more confident. He tried to relax his arms and not clutch his pack quite so tightly. He felt Fang’s chest rumble on his foot.
‘You don’t want to sleep on these streets tonight,’ the woman said, strutting past, ‘not even with those ferocious guard dogs.’
‘I’m looking for a job,’ he called after her.
She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Try Centrelink.’
‘I can’t.’ Luke got up and ran after her, and to his immense relief she stopped and turned.
He stared at her and she stared back with that same blend of tenderness and bossiness that he had always seen in Annie’s face. She would help him, he could tell. ‘You know anywhere I could stay for the night?’
The woman looked him over some more, huffed, looked at her watch and then fumbled in her handbag. She pulled out some keys and turned back in the direction she had come from. ‘Twenty bucks a night. The dogs stay outside and you clean up their shit. Be up and out by eight-thirty in the morning, and don’t come back until five.’
When they reached the small art gallery, she unlocked the door and flicked on the lights. Inside, the walls and the ceiling were painted matte black and paintings of assorted styles hung everywhere. Luke took a wriggling pup in each arm as she led him past a small sales counter at the back of the studio and through a doorway into a small kitchenette. Under an enormous amount of debris was a couch.
‘I stay here when I’m feeling creative,’ the woman said, pulling at a mound of calico and piling it on the floor. ‘Or when my husband’s got the shits. I spilled a whole can of red paint over the floor at home the other day – he didn’t like that much.’
Luke faked a laugh.
‘Just chuck that stuff on the floor. The toilet’s outside.’ She looked at Filth and Fang, tucked under his arms. ‘And so are the dingos. Don’t lock yourself out – it’s a deadlock and I’m not giving you a key.’
Luke tossed the pups out the back door into a small courtyard and reached into his pocket for his wallet.
‘Fix me up tomorrow.’ She glanced at her watch again. ‘I gotta go. There’s some half-dead lasagne in the fridge if your dogs are hungry. Don’t let them near any of my art, or I’ll hunt you down and kill you. I’m Talia, by the way.’
Luke stared up at the black ceiling. He wouldn’t sleep here, he knew. The place was so unfamiliar after sleeping under a wide open sky – it was like wrapping a cold wet blanket around his already freezing body. But it was better than being out on the streets. He could already hear drunken voices.
He reached for the moonstone and found a bare throat, patted the front of his chest and pulled the collar of his jersey up. He ripped the shirt off. ‘Where’s my moonstone?’
Maybe he had put it in his pack without thinking; he grabbed it and tore it open. He scooped out the old socks, knife, maps, dried-out mandarin skins and greasy burger wrappers, threw it all on the floor and turned the pack inside out. Shook it, flung it around, slapped it against the wall. Then he hurled it across the kitchenette and watched it land on a pile of unwashed plates. A glass fell off the sink and smashed on the floor.
‘Damn it,’ he yelled, ‘damn everything!’
Luke threw himself backwards onto the couch and put his hands over his face. ‘It was all I had,’ he groaned through his fingers.
His last connection to Coachwood Crossing was gone. He pulled his hands away from his face and let them hang limp down by his sides. He stared at the ceiling for a while, then rolled his head and stared out into the studio.
There was a telephone among the clutter on the sales desk. He could ring Jess and talk to her, ask how Annie was going, who was riding Legsy now, if any of the mares had foaled yet. It might help fill this empty gaping cavern in his chest. He closed his eyes and thought of her voice. Imagined it on the other end of the phone, making him laugh.
But a wave of hollow loss forced his eyes open again. He couldn’t think of Jess without seeing the green river flats and the dense line of trees running along banks, without feeling a gentler sun on his skin and smelling freshly cut clover. He breathed deeply. Nope. It did him no good to think about anyone from Coachwood Crossing. He walked out to the studio.
There were a lot of touristy dot paintings in gaudy kindergarten colours, some funky fat witchetty grub pictures, bark paintings and hand stencils, all by different artists. But the huge contemporary paintings along the northern wall took his breath away. They were unbelievably intricate and reflected the greens, ochres and browns of the local country. He could see the spinifex, the chestnut-red boulders and golden grass, chalk-white tree bark; all in soft, irregular shapes with rivers of dots flowing between them. He could imagine the brumbies running through the painting and had an overwhelming urge to put his palms out and place them flat on the canvas so he could feel the earth.
At eight-thirty the next morning, Luke left a twenty-dollar note on the sales desk and let himself out through the back door.
At the local shopping centre, he washed down a couple of bananas with a can of no
-name cola and looked through his wallet. It was such a bummer that he hadn’t collected his winnings. All he had was a paltry ten bucks.
He needed a job, quickly. He tried to make himself look half-decent in the shopping centre toilets, washing his face, straightening out Pete’s rugby jersey and combing his fingers through his hair. He rubbed a finger over his teeth, took one last glance in the mirror and hoped his grubby appearance would at least make him look like he’d been working hard.
Then he walked back out to the hot, dry streets. He would ask every station man that he saw if they knew of any work. He wouldn’t stop until he found something.
Approaching people got easier after he had done it a few times. He waited outside a farm supply store and accosted the stockmen as they got out of their cars. After a while, he just asked everyone – women, children, old men, young men, black, white. Someone would have to know of something.
‘Hi, mate. I’m looking for work – do you know if there’s anything around?’
‘I’m on the hunt for some work . . . Okay.’
‘Don’t know of any work going, do you, mate?’
‘Hi, my name’s Luke.’ Quick nod. ‘I’m trying to find some work.’
He collected a few phone numbers of people who might have something and found a phone box, but they all came to a dead end. He got plenty of head-scratching, thoughtful looks, best wishes, even semi-interviews, but by the time the store closed its gates at five, nothing had come up and he was left sitting in the gutter with an empty stomach and nowhere to go.
Talia unlocked the studio door and let him in. ‘Don’t interrupt me, I’m having an epiphany,’ she said as she locked it behind him and walked to a large canvas lying flat on a table.
Luke went out the back door and held out his arms for the pups. They jumped up and lavished him with lasagne-scented kisses. ‘Smells like you guys had a better feed than me,’ he said, rubbing their backs.
‘I fed them – they were driving me nuts. They’ve been crying all day,’ said Talia from behind him.