by Lia Hills
Jed nudged my shoulder and squinted.
‘I reckon it’s doable,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The river. It doesn’t look that deep.’
‘Maybe. Impossible to know. There’s so much silt and shit in there.’
He grinned. ‘I guess I’ll just have to test the waters then, so to speak.’
‘You sure about this?’
‘No.’
He got up. Walked over to his bike. Eyed the water like you’d check the ocean for rips. A discussion started up among the other men, cheches adjusted, rewound. I followed him over.
‘Don’t s’pose I’ll be needing this,’ he said, handing me his helmet.
Climbing on his bike, Jed steadied himself. The starter motor resisted the thrust of his thumb as if giving him time to consider the sanity of what he was about to attempt. But then, with a whine and a cough, it kicked over.
By now, the other men were standing beside me.
‘Pas bien,’ said one.
Another shook his head.
‘If it’s too strong, you haul me out, all right?’ said Jed.
‘Sure.’
Before us, the water pushed its way through the palm grove, fronds spinning on its surface. A snake rode a crest, just another ripple. The road turned to concrete where it entered the water – a ford built just for such occasions, no doubt – the newly formed river as silent as a lake, though circular patches alluded to hidden currents. For months we’d been upping the ante. A sense of invincibility had begun to take hold.
As Jed entered the river, the camel brayed as if in premonition. Dumped a fresh crop of dung. The water seemed to hesitate, then surged over the rim of Jed’s front tyre, slicing itself on the spokes. His jeans were instantly soaked to the knee.
‘Take it slow,’ I said from behind him.
‘You’re next,’ he replied.
One of the men clucked.
Before I’d even had time to predict how it might go, the current took hold of him. It lifted the front wheel, aided by the empty five-litre jerry cans we’d strapped to the frame.
Jed squeezed his fists around the brakes, but he was no longer in control. He was at the mercy of the river, which had no intention other than to continue south as fast as it could, taking everything with it. The bike twisted downstream, Jed’s feet flailing for grip.
I plunged in.
Gripped the frame.
Other hands joined mine, hands so rucked by sand and sun and an absence of water that they looked mummified. Shouts rose above the rush of the river, in French, Arabic, Tamacheq, the camel pontificating from its vantage point, shitting for all it was worth. Jed said nothing. It was taking everything he had to keep the steering straight so that we would have a hope of pulling him out.
One man slipped and was lifted back into place, the dank smell of wet woollen djellabas vying with the cheap rose cologne the men loved to wear. Shoulders jostled. Fingers lost their hold. But together, steadily, chaotically, we dragged Jed and the Suzuki back through the current and onto dry land.
We all stepped back to look at the bike, blue and gleaming and salvaged. At Jed, jeans glued to his legs, his hands gripping the handlebars as if he were poised to re-enter the river.
‘Shukran,’ I said, thanking the men, all of who were soaked to the waist.
They nodded, a number of them raising their hands to their chests, palm placed over the heart in a gesture I knew to mean you’re welcome.
Jed was still in no state to show his gratitude. He was slumped over the handlebars, his left leg, the one that had taken the brunt of the river’s force, shuddering.
All but one of the men returned to the fire, where they wrung out the end of their djellabas. A plastic shoe was removed and its contents poured onto the road.
‘You all right?’ I asked Jed.
He straightened. Took a look around him as if dry land was somehow more disorientating than the river.
‘Fine,’ he said and dismounted.
To the accompanying moan of the camel, he opened one of the side cases and fished around inside. Brought out an empty hand and flourished it like an amateur magician.
‘Not a drop.’ He grinned. ‘Worth every bloody bit of that silicon.’
Beside me, the man who’d remained watching clucked, the blue skin of his face almost entirely hidden beneath his cheche. Then he turned to me and spoke, his accent singsong but guttural, like he was snorting back honey. I didn’t understand what he said, at least not the words, but his expression was clear. The kind of forlorn look that passes between harried parents.
You’ll need to take care with that one, it said.
63
I took the long way back from Thaddeus’ place, needing time to think. I sat under a dusty bloodwood for a bit, rerouted an ant column with a barrier I built of sand. Felt a vague pleasure in it: the deflection of all that industry. At one stage I almost fell asleep, the afternoon warm, even the breeze that found me in the shade, its heat extracted from the surrounding earth. No one was around, no houses on this boundary track, though the path was well worn, not all the tracks human.
On my way back past the cemetery, I overtook a kid who was walking along humming, his legs thin rods beneath his baggy shorts. He looked about eleven or twelve, on the threshold of adolescence, everything about him liminal: the scrawniness of his arms that ended in man-size hands; the angle he walked orientated to the sun, his shadow minimised. He fell into step with me, despite the fact that I was at least a foot taller than him, compensating with long strides.
‘Hi,’ he said, puffing.
‘Hey.’
‘What’s your name?’
I wasn’t in much of a mood for chatting, but he was making such an effort to keep up I felt obliged.
‘Saul.’
‘My name is Mandela.’
‘That’s a lot to live up to,’ I said.
He frowned, sweat linking a row of zits on his forehead. Returned to his humming. I half recognised the tune, but it was contained in his throat, as if not for public consumption. And I was glad of it, the chance to remain silent. All that talk with Thaddeus had left me parched and wanting in other ways.
We continued like that for a bit, a magpie lark fossicking beneath a bush no inroad to conversation. And he kept pace. Mandela. The kid with the name that sounded like the kind of willed prophecy I’d been drawn to most of my life. Broke into a skip once or twice, as if the childhood he was about to leave behind was making a last-ditch appeal.
The road wound around till it reached the first houses, all of them single-storeyed, each painted a different colour, no numbers out the front. As we approached a purple house, I heard a low growl.
So did Mandela.
He put his hand out, his fingers patting my stomach to keep me back.
From behind a hedge of leggy shrubs, a dog emerged, a white V at its throat. It took two steps forwards and barked, a rumble traversing its lean body. The boy remained unmoving.
Teeth bared, the dog barked again, and this time it was clear that it was directed at me, for whatever reason. My boot could make quick work of it, I thought to myself. If only I could distract it. If only I could be sure it wouldn’t upset the kid.
Two more dogs trotted towards us, smaller, more starved, their muzzles vacuuming the dust as they hustled along the street. They stopped when they saw what was happening. Seemed to be waiting for their cue.
The sun oppressive, I squinted, my shoulder aching where Roopie had wrenched it, the squawk of a galah above us a fraying sound.
I dipped towards the ground. Made as if I was grabbing for a rock.
The dog flinched, obviously no stranger to pain. Backed off in small bounds. But it just as quickly returned. And I pictured it – canines locking on flesh, head thrashing from side to side, alert to what a fragile thing a human is.
The kid held out his hand like he was measuring the dog’s temperature, said something in Pitjantjatjara.
> ‘Hey,’ I said, unsure if he knew what he was doing.
The dog retracted its lip.
But Mandela stepped forwards and spoke again, and I drew in beside him, held my ground despite every cell telling me to fall back.
The dog raised its nose and gave three short barks, one of its teeth snapped at the root. Shot a glance at the other two, as if weighing up the odds, their tails at half-mast. But then it stepped backwards and withdrew behind the hedge, without even a low growl to mark its exit. Show over, the two blow-ins trotted off down the road, snapping at flies.
I shook my head. Breathed out.
‘What the hell was that about?’ I asked.
But the kid didn’t answer, just waited for me to get moving again, and for a moment I gave thought to how different his boyhood must’ve been to mine. The initiations, both structured and random. Those pivotal moments in a kid’s life that make the man.
‘You coming?’ I asked, checking for movement in the hedge.
I stopped at the store to buy painkillers. Mandela was still standing by the gate when I came out. He straightened as soon as he saw me. Moved into the sun. I handed him one of the oranges I’d bought, seduced by the shine and brashness of their skins. He stroked its dimpled peel with the kind of tenderness usually reserved for injured birds.
64
I once met an artist on the Cornish coast who said she was painting God’s sleep patterns. I’d escaped the Kensington pub for a week in search of a good beach, the northern coast supposed to be in possession of a few. But the Atlantic had been flat and slate-coloured for days, the weather unseasonably stony. So I’d headed off on foot, hugging cliffs so keenly chiselled there seemed nothing natural about them. The woman was braced amid the heather with an easel and a make-up-free smile when I came across her just south of Padstow, her knitted beret the colour of brine as if she was trying to lose herself in the landscape. It was early morning, her fingers protruding from gloves whose tips had been cut off to allow better mastering of the brush, the watercolours a riptide of tangerine and amber and red. When I’d asked her why she’d come out so early, in such cold, she’d said that at sunrise and set, God yawned, and He briefly revealed his true self. The masculine pronoun had sounded significant.
But this was a desert daybreak, the splotches of paint on the concrete acrylic.
The chill clung to the back of my hands, a crow insisted its four-pronged complaint, a thousand galahs competing with the camp dogs in a messy chorus that sounded like an aria riffing on a machine gun. From the fire lit the night before, ash rose, hovered, the sun breaching the mulga somehow in my possession as I watched it reach towards me across the yard. I remembered the authenticating certificates on the art in the Alice galleries. Wondered whether you could appropriate a dawn.
My legs hung over the edge of the verandah; I had the distinct feeling of being observed.
It was Roopie again, lurking by the door like my abridged shadow. He was wearing a t-shirt Nara had worn the day before, the words ngapartji ngapartji printed on it. Leaping across a blanket, he lifted the t-shirt and thrust his pelvis forwards, pissed off the verandah into the sand. White light fizzed in the steaming arc, his tiny penis little more than a stub. I thought about joining him but people were stirring on other verandahs.
A dog as skinny as the morning made its way up the street, its tail already warming to the day. Roopie ran to it, headed out the gate. I wanted to warn him, but he already had it in his arms and was dragging it towards the yard. He wrestled with its neck, clung to it even though the dog seemed committed to its freedom, its haunches sprung and ready.
Overpowered, Roopie fell to the ground and floundered in the dust. The mutt leant over him, licked him to his feet, slobber dangling from its chops. It barked and a row of galahs fled the powerlines on the other side of the road, circled the town in a great squawking mass before taking up residence again.
And I could imagine it, so easily – Jed sitting like this on the verandah in the morning chill. With such clarity it was as if he was there: hair the kind of unruly that women loved; one eye green, the other blue, as if one colour wasn’t enough through which to view the world. How he must have watched Roopie do this a hundred times. Felt the surge of fatherhood – the desire to protect and at the same time allow – even if he wasn’t blood.
Roopie wrapped his arms around the dog again, tried to haul it into his lap. But it was tired of love. Breaking free, it bolted off down the street. Roopie watched it go, wiped slobber from his cheek. Then he waltzed over and tugged at my hand.
‘Saul,’ he said, though it sounded more like soul.
‘Bread?’
‘Bread.’
‘I bought some more peanut butter. After all those people showed up last night, I hid it in the freezer to make sure you’d have a chance of getting some for breakfast.’
‘Brek-vist,’ he parroted, and I figured my secret was safe with him.
‘Morning,’ said a voice from behind.
Wrapped in a brown minky blanket, Nara was leaning against the doorframe, her eyes still sleepy, her feet bare.
‘Didn’t see you there,’ I said.
Roopie pushed past her, snatching at the blanket, her legs bare below the knees of her shorts.
‘It’s warming up,’ I said.
‘Too cold for me.’
‘You can go back to bed, if you like. I’ll get him breakfast.’
‘He likes you.’
‘The feeling’s mutual.’
She frowned and I wondered if I’d overstepped her vocabulary, though given what Thaddeus had said about her, it was unlikely.
‘He asked me why you are here. If you’re an uncle.’
‘What did you say?’
‘You were alone.’
Nara sat next to me, hoisted the blanket around her shoulders, the morning shrugging off the muted colours of dawn.
‘You went to see Ngunytjima yesterday?’ she asked.
‘Yes. We got talking.’
‘He likes to talk, that one.’
‘Sure does. Knows a lot of things.’
‘Ngunytjima stays,’ she said, as if suddenly remembering his most important quality.
‘Yes.’
‘He can see both ways.’
I nodded, something Thaddeus had said still nagging at my mind. Ghosts have appetites too. A couple of boys came sprinting down the street. Called out to Roopie, who answered them, his face pressed against the wire of the fence.
‘A kid called Mandela walked me home.’
‘Mm.’
‘You know him?’ I asked, before realising what a stupid question it was given the size of the place.
‘He’s my son,’ she said. Then clarified: ‘My sister’s son.’
‘Nice kid.’
‘Uwa. Kunpu. Strong one.’
It was the first time she’d spoken Pitjantjatjara to me – a letting-go or letting-in? The blanket had begun to slip down her shoulders and as she pulled it up I saw that on the underside of her forearm was a long scar, almost as dark as the rest of her, suggesting it had been there since birth. Its surface looked molten.
‘What happened there?’ I asked.
‘What?’
‘Your arm.’
She turned it over and looked at the scar as if noticing it for the first time, ran her finger along its full length.
‘Car accident. Near Pukatja. I was little.’ She drew her arm against her chest, her body rallying around the memory. ‘My mother’s people are from that way,’ she said, indicating the opposite direction to the ranges.
‘Pukatja?’
‘Uwa. I loved going there.’
With her mouth, she pointed to my elbow, to the red track that followed its curve.
‘Surgery,’ I said.
I held it up. Noticed how dry my skin was, every crease amplified as if in the last week I’d aged five years.
‘Reconstructive surgery?’ she asked.
A laugh escaped me and
she frowned. Caught me surveying the shape of her mouth. I focused on my elbow.
‘About five years back,’ I said. ‘Came off my bike and broke my arm in three places. Needed pins in my elbow.’
‘My uncle had that. Good footy player, gammy knee.’ She rubbed a finger across her scar like it might be erasable. ‘He talked about you,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘When you were little. That place you grew up. Hobart.’
The word sounded foreign coming from her, but there was something else too. It was as if a tangent had been drawn. That it now sat in relation to this place.
‘What did he say?’ I asked her.
‘That it was the opposite of here. Made of water.’
‘Did he ever talk about the river?’
She nodded. ‘He said you went there sometimes together, after school and in the holidays. It was an important place.’
‘Yeah, it was.’
Nara traced her scar from one end to the other like it too was a tributary.
‘He was here one time when the river flooded,’ she said. ‘He got really excited. Went down to watch it. Sat at the edge of it for hours. That night he told me a story. About this time you were in the desert together, in Africa.’
‘And we got caught out by a river that hadn’t run in years?’
‘Uwa.’
She scratched her head, and I wondered what other stories of ours she might have stored in there, Jed’s versions of them, tempered by her own way of seeing things.
‘He was sure he could cross it on his motorbike,’ she said, her hand shooting out in front of her. ‘But the water was too strong. He thought it would carry him away.’
‘So did I.’
‘But you ran in and saved him.’
‘Saved him?’
‘Uwa.’
I turned to face her. ‘What else did he say?’