by Lia Hills
I probed my bush face reflected in the smeared surface of the mirror, my jaw a furry mess. In my toiletries bag was a disposable razor but nothing to work as lubricant, the sliver of soap on the edge of the sink dried to a sharp edge. As I rinsed the blades under the water, I remembered a can of shaving cream I’d noticed at the back of the vanity – the word my mother’s, a rare collision between language and truth. It was still there, its base a ring of rust, the cap missing, the congealed remnants of its last ejaculation now the texture of epoxy. I dug out the offending plug and gave the contents a good shake. Felt that old pleasure of the foam as it filled my hand, its airy plumpness, a can of my dad’s shaving cream more than once sacrificed to bathroom wars between me and my sister in the years before self-consciousness outweighed sibling prankery.
A rust patch had flowered on one of the blades, but the razor did the job. Made a sound like wood being sanded as I dragged it across my chin. The revealed skin was whiter than the rest, made me look oddly new, vulnerable in a way I hadn’t been aiming for.
‘Bugger it,’ I said, tapping the razor against the sink.
The can stared back, a tongue of foam oozing from it. There was a grubby fingerprint on the white metal, beneath the red tick of the generic brand, probably bought at a supermarket in Alice. I cleaned the nozzle. Put the can back where I’d found it. Remembered something he’d once said to me: It’s rarely the big stuff that catches you out.
On the verandah, the session had ended. Nara was sitting cross-legged opposite the old man, whose posture mirrored her own, his hands folded in his lap.
‘This is my father,’ she said.
‘Saul,’ I said, and held out my hand.
He offered his in return – the same loose grip as the women – but no name. Still holding on to my hand, he said a few words in Pitjantjatjara, then, ‘Sorry.’ When he let go, he looked up at me, his eyes tired around the edges but as convincing as Nara’s.
‘Sit,’ he said, and tapped the concrete beside him.
I obeyed. My legs, though crossed, looked oversized beside his thin, short ones. He wore shoes but no socks. Roopie nudged in between us, stroked my newly smooth face with a grin of approval.
Nara spoke to her father, softly. I understood hardly any of it, at least not the words, though the old man was effusive in his gestures, and I gathered they were talking about going somewhere, or having been, a long way away, then returning. Sitting on my knee, Roopie checked for missed whiskers as I tried to keep track of the conversation.
Nara bowed her head and her father laid his hand on it. This time when he spoke it was in English, though I couldn’t tell if it was directed at me.
‘This one a love story,’ he said.
67
The next morning I found myself alone. Nara was at work at the day care centre opposite the clinic, Roopie with her, May gone visiting. I tried to settle into the reprieve from human traffic, but there was a strangeness to my solitude I couldn’t get a grip on. Even Voss felt irrelevant, seduced by its own fiction. I watched birds for a bit, a crested pigeon amusing for a while with its jerky machinations and fear of its own shadow. I even tried calling it with the word Roopie had taught me, aralapalpalpa, from the sound their wings make when they take flight. But it just stared at me with its pin eyes, its brain too small or my accent too whitefella.
So I did what my breed does when faced with a bare minute – I went through my phone, despite its lack of reception. Skipped the guilt-inducing texts from my mother. Took another look at the MMS I’d received from Ziggy the day I’d left, a photo of Mount Gillen, the dog’s snout, another one for her collection. Switched the camera into selfie mode and appraised my beyond-the-black-stump stare.
At that point, I decided to walk over to Thaddeus’ place, but he wasn’t home either, his old troopie gone, only its broad tracks remaining.
Outside the store, there was a commotion going on, a fat woman in a green dress yelling at a guy whose arm was bandaged to the elbow. Going by the way he cowered, I took him to be her husband. She held a stick by her side. Inside the store things were calmer, though busy, a bunch of kids milling around the sour straps, grinning as they peeled them off. A few people I knew by sight, but didn’t feel I could strike up a conversation. Errol was busy out back according to the cashier, her pinched look indicating that ‘out back’ was out of bounds.
My morning was beginning to look a total loss when Cliff drove up, his ute lurching to a stop. He leant out the open window, the engine still running. Offered me his hand. I shook it.
‘Got some shopping to do?’ I asked him.
He shook his head, his hair held back with a blue bandana rather than the usual cowboy hat.
‘Looking for men,’ he said.
‘Anybody in particular?’
‘Uwa. That new ranger fella arrive last night. Want to talk about going out on country. Do some burning.’
He waved a hand in the direction of the ranges. Waved it again to indicate beyond.
‘Do you do ranger work?’ I asked.
‘Uwa.’
‘What happened to the last ranger?’
‘He left. There was trouble there. Made some of the aunties angry.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Oooh.’ He grinned, and I could imagine it, the wrath they were capable of.
‘And the new fella?’
Cliff shrugged. Turned his engine off but didn’t get out.
‘You come. Uwa?’
‘To do some burning off?’
‘Uwa.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
He clucked and nodded. ‘Stay a bit, yeah?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘Where your family, then?’ he asked. ‘Your home?’
‘Tasmania.’
He sucked in air through his teeth. ‘Long way that.’
‘About as far away from here as you can get and still be in the country.’
I looked over towards the payphone. There were calls I needed to make.
Cliff followed my gaze. ‘Good place here,’ he said, adjusting the bandana. ‘Maybe you stay long time.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Uwa.’
Nara’s brother-in-law, Gus, came over, a Collingwood scarf wound around his neck. He’d been talking to a group of men over by the art centre, had been since I first arrived at the store. He shook both our hands and extracted a cigarette from his top pocket, tapped it against his wrist. Cliff spoke to him in Pitjantjatjara, the word ranger not translated, a couple of others I recognised – waru, fire; ngura, country. Gus nodded and wandered around to the other side of the ute. Climbed into the passenger seat, the cigarette tucked behind his ear.
‘Go look for those other fellas,’ said Cliff, turning on the engine.
‘Palya.’
‘Palya.’
He glanced at the phone. Nodded and drove off.
68
Andy was only surprised that it had taken me so long to quit, which made me laugh as I’d thought I’d been doing a good job of behaving like someone ready to settle down. He didn’t talk long, other phones ringing in the background, but he let me know he appreciated the work I’d done and that he’d transfer the money for the holidays I was owed. Turned out he still had a vestige of the guy I’d met in France left in him.
Afterwards, I rang my mother, but she wasn’t home. I tried her mobile. Left a message. In my mind was don’t fear for me, but instead I mumbled something about maybe a week or two more, the weather here’s great.
Ziggy’s phone was out of range.
Nara wasn’t back when I returned to the house, but the blankets were in a different configuration from how they’d been that morning, a Coke can upturned and swarming with ants. I dug for the key under the mattress. Binned the can and poured water over the sticky mess. Sent the ants scarpering.
‘Minga,’ I said, remembering their Pitjantjatjara name.
I grabbed the dictionary from my pack and looked it up: (Ayers Rock slang) t
ourists. Flicked through the pages for a word I’d heard Cliff use. It was hard to match the letters to the sounds I’d got used to hearing – the t pronounced more like a d, the ng that sounded like you had a cold – but eventually I found it. Malpa. Friend. On another page, beside the word kungkapanpa, was a scribble that looked like a cross between a camel and a dog. It hadn’t been there last time I’d looked. Roopie, I figured.
As if on cue, the gate opened, the boy’s toes curled through its wire. Nara was behind him carrying a large cardboard box. She shoved it into the shade on the verandah, its contents mostly food, and sat beside me. Scanned the page I’d been looking at, no comment about her son’s handiwork.
‘Kungkapanpa,’ she read. ‘Bogeywoman.’
Nara frowned. Reached into the box for a block of chocolate that was already half gone. Roopie stood jiggling beside her, tomato sauce clotted on his chin.
‘I’m going with some of the other women this afternoon,’ she said, breaking off a piece of chocolate for him. ‘With the women and the kids.’
‘Okay.’
‘Maku.’
‘What?’
‘Witchetty grubs.’
‘Oh,’ I said, accepting the row of chocolate squares she handed to me.
I would’ve liked to go, see if they really tasted like scrambled eggs, some childhood fantasy of living off the land, of being the Bush Tucker Man, rippling in the back of my mind. But this was a women’s thing and I’d already overstretched my welcome there.
‘I’ll do some reading,’ I said, ‘or go and see if Thaddeus is back from wherever he’s gone.’
‘He sometimes takes the old men out to one of the waterholes.’
The way she said it, I figured it wasn’t for a swim.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, pointing to a stick lying on the ground, a black binding half unravelled from it.
‘A devil stick.’
‘Devil stick?’
She scooped it up with her left hand, threaded it through her middle fingers.
‘Uwa. A circus mob came through here a little while ago. Good for the kids.’
She spun it, her long fingers calibrated to keep it in motion. But then it cut loose and flew skywards. Landed with a thud. She dipped her chin, almost shy, trailed her fingers in the sand. Retrieving the stick, she held it out to me.
‘Not really my kind of thing,’ I said.
But she insisted, flicked her hand at the wrist. Roopie was standing in the doorway, counting in English, except the th had been supplanted by a j.
‘Won, two, jree, won, two, jree.’
I’d never used a devil stick before, but I did my best not to let my team down. Twirled the thing at the end of my fingers like a novice marching girl, drawing in more parts of my body than were no doubt required. A few more goes and I got it into an awkward spin, but Roopie reared back his head and snorted, everyone a critic. He grabbed it from me, throwing me glances as he pivoted the thing. Despite the smallness of his hands, he seemed to have picked up some defining principle, the baton caught in a motion that was almost entertaining.
‘There’s a place he liked to go to,’ said Nara, her hand held out towards her son. ‘Maybe you could go there this afternoon.’
It took me a moment to realise who she was talking about.
‘Good place,’ she said, raising her eyebrows, exposing the whites of her eyes.
‘Where is it?’
She pointed with her mouth, northwards, towards the ranges.
‘Is it easy to find?’ I asked.
‘Uwa. If you know where you’re going.’
‘Right.’
‘My father could take you,’ she said, her voice rising at the end as if the idea had only just occurred to her, or that her aim was to convince me of this. ‘Places like that one, better to go with someone who knows.’
I forgot the boy and the stick. Turned to look at her. Her eyes were resolute, her face a picture of calm.
‘He knows a lot of things,’ she said.
And for the first time, I considered that Nara – the one I’d sought out – might have her own plan for me. That she needed something from me just as I did from her.
69
Nara and Roopie gone, I had another go at Voss. The exploring party were only on the fringe of the desert, on the edge of where it enters the mind and begins to spread its sands. Safe territory still. After a bit, I made myself some ham sandwiches, sat in the doorway surveying the empty verandah, already incapable of looking at those blankets without seeing their usual inhabitants. Beyond, the ranges rippled in the afternoon heat, the temperature hotter than on any other day since I’d got here, well into the thirties, despite the fact that autumn was almost done. My stomach full, it was a struggle to keep my eyes open. The night before I’d been woken by people shouting, some kind of domestic up the street, a legion of dogs on the edge of town barking like there was no tomorrow till tomorrow came.
The blanket Inti often used was the closest. Its edges were hemmed with brown satin, the lustre surviving the dust in places. Among its folds I made out a jaguar, lay down on it, the pile almost as soft as the fur it simulated despite patches matted with paint. I could feel myself giving in to the warmth of the afternoon, to the sky so void of cloud that it vowed to stay like that forever.
My eyes drooped. My leg twitched.
He’d be along soon, to take me to that place. Nara’s father – Kata, I remembered, my mind entering that grabbing stage. Kata the ngangkari. And we’d go wherever it was, in the direction of the ranges. It was okay, she’d said, as long as you went with someone who knew.
‘Write it down, best way to forget,’ said a low voice.
Nara’s father was standing over me, squinting. He nodded at the book beside me, his face impassive, not a hint of irony.
I sat up, still vulnerable from the call of sleep. Apologised, as if I’d been dozing on the job.
He waited, hands in his pockets, a black bomber jacket on despite the temperature.
‘Just need to lock up,’ I said.
The key safe in its cache again, I followed him, my day pack slung over my shoulder. But he carried no water with him – just had his hat and a swagger that looked less the result of injury than some kind of personal trait, a way of dealing with distance. We walked halfway to the store before he stopped in front of a yellow house, gestured for me to wait by a gate. Voices were coming from inside, his boot blocking a dog that was endeavouring to bolt via the front door, its body like a car being revved with its brakes on. I couldn’t see who Kata was talking to, only saw a hand that produced a set of keys.
Kata pocketed them before spinning on the heel of his boot and returning to where I stood. He pointed to an old BMW parked in the driveway, its bright orange paint job definitely not original. Its sheen was well preserved given what it would’ve had to endure to get here.
I got into the passenger side, a bum-well firmly established in the seat. Kata kicked it over, acquainted the accelerator with the weight of his foot to an accompanying grin.
‘Wirunya,’ he said, which I took to mean bloody good.
He reversed it out with a prudence worthy of his age, but once we’d cleared the store with its corpus of punters and loiterers, he floored it, testing the BMW’s low clearance as soon as we were free of trailing dogs. Kata was obviously well versed in sand and its moods – handling a car built for autobahns as if it had missed its calling – but I put my seatbelt on all the same. Kept my eyes on the road.
There was no talking. The wind through the open windows and the slapping of spinifex against the chassis didn’t really allow for it, and Kata seemed intent, his long fingers hooked loosely around the wheel but never losing control of it. When the track became more rocky, we slowed, the exhaust scraping a few times as we climbed out of dips and onto flatter ground, water having passed through at some stage, leaving its combing trails. The ranges lost their haziness the closer we got, the red of the rock not uniform, but fluted with da
rk folds. About five hundred metres from the base of the first cliff, the track ended in a turning circle. The remains of several campfires were evident, their stockpile of coals and ash, some of it disturbed by the wind that withed its way through the needles of the desert oak under which we parked.
The engine made a few perfunctory clunks before it settled.
‘Palya?’ asked Kata, looking at me for the first time since we’d taken to the road.
‘Palya.’
I wanted to ask him how far the place was from here, but I figured I’d find out soon enough.
The windows we left open, the flies already moving in. Kata unzipped his bomber jacket, a checked shirt beneath, the buttons open to the sternum, revealing a long scar across his chest, a smooth welt about the span of a hand. An initiate’s scarification. Or maybe a ‘sorry cut’, like the ones Thaddeus had mentioned.
The path led between two high rock walls, stones smoothed in places from water or feet. Kata went first, flies clinging to the back of his shirt, disrupting the pattern. A grevillea with holly-shaped leaves snatched at the sleeve of my t-shirt as I tried to keep up with him, the drooping red flowers like a bunch of commas.
Kata halted and waited till I was standing beside him. Between his fingers he held an orange fruit about the size and shape of a large olive. He held it up like a jewel, even though the scraggly bush beside him was covered in them, dangling like shiny plump earrings.
‘Kampurarpa,’ he said. ‘Bush tomato.’
He handed it to me, his fingers dust-dry. Nodded. I put it in my mouth. It tasted bitter, more like a tamarillo than a tomato, but satisfying in that it was native and wild and still warm from the sun.
As we continued along the track, he pointed out more to me. He rubbed a perfume bush between his fingers then held them up to my nose. Showed me spearwood, sorting through its thin branches till he found a particularly straight one. Wordlessly, he demonstrated how he would cut it, scrape its bark, roll it in a fire, line it up and throw it, bring down an imaginary roo. All this I watched with a fascination dredged up from boyhood.