by Lia Hills
We moved on. The vegetation grew more dense. Ahead, the soaring foliage of a river gum.
‘Aratja,’ said Kata, pointing to a bush with spindly leaves and rubbing his chest. ‘Bush medicine.’
Most of the bushes looked more or less the same to me, clumps of dusty leaves, but, being a ngangkari, I figured that for Kata the place was like a pharmacy. He pulled the leaves off some kind of wattle and rubbed it on his knuckle.
‘Kurara,’ he said. ‘Good for them warts.’
He glanced at my hands and kept going, the track veering right, descending between boulders, till the dust turned to rock. A crow heralded our arrival, its wail echoing between the red walls of the gorge that had narrowed to the width of a street, the southern face leaning in. Near the far end, a red river gum barred the view to what lay beyond. At the lowest point was a waterhole, oblong, a couple of metres wide at the most, everything above it reflected in its surface. A ghost gum clung to the northern face. Seemed poised to plummet.
‘Does it have a name, this place?’ I asked.
‘Uwa,’ he said, but nothing more.
He approached the water slowly, crouched at its edge and placed his hands on the surface. Mumbled something. I kept back, waited for him to finish, as two finches chased each other around a bush, alighting on the same branch. When he was done, he eased himself up, his right leg stronger than his left. Gestured for me to come and sit, his hand moving like he was dribbling a basketball. He closed his eyes, looked for a moment like he was nodding off, his shoulders swaying a little. But then he stilled, opened his eyes again.
‘My grandfather bring me here,’ he said. ‘Teach me things.’ He held his hand above his head, palm towards the sky. A bug skated across the surface of the water, made dents in it. If he wanted to tell me about this place, he’d do it in his own time. The rock surrounding us was pocked and water-stained, but clean, the way that no manmade place can ever be. Its red felt organic, visceral. A gut turned to stone.
‘It’s beautiful here.’
‘Uwa,’ said Kata, the word drawn out, breathed in.
He tapped the end of my boot, pointed to a large lizard that had emerged into the sun, a long white stripe down the length of its body. It tasted the air with quick darts. Lifted a foot as if waving.
Kata chuckled. ‘Water dragon,’ he said. ‘Tjuntalpi.’
The word was obviously a translation, but it sounded like he was calling it by its name. The lizard cocked its head and returned to the safety of the shadows.
‘Thaddeus told me that you and your father were the ones who brought people back to Ininyingi.’
‘Uwa. He’s gone now.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘Good man, that one,’ he said, clucking his tongue. ‘Too many old people gone.’
‘You miss him?’
Kata nodded. ‘Good thing we done, bring everybody back. Get ’em away from the grog, back on country. Teach them little ones right way. Talk in language.’
‘There’s a lot of stories here?’
‘Uwa. Father’s country,’ he said, stretching his arm in a sweeping motion around him.
‘Good place, yeah?’
‘Wirunya.’
I picked up a stone, the heat of the sun still in it. Felt the old impulse to throw it into the water. Didn’t.
‘Nara said my friend liked to come here.’
‘Uwa.’
Kata bowed his head, breathed in slowly, and just as slowly out. It was possible, given Jed’s relationship with Nara, that Kata had come to see him like a son. He pinched his fingers and tapped the base of his sternum.
‘Ngalungku,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.’
‘Two men go through business together, mates from when they was little kids.’
‘Business?’
He raised his eyebrows in confirmation. Pointed at me, then flicked his hand in the direction from where we’d come.
‘You two. You was ngalungku.’
Kata nodded and rested his wrists on his knees, his fingers playing the wind. Channelled by the warm rock, it disturbed the surface of the waterhole, whipped lines across it till it resembled the hide of an animal. Sometimes the Derwent would look like that as you stared down at it from the bluff. Like the back of a great water beast, its body distending between shores, its humours dictated by the season or the moon. Nobody had brought us to that outcrop above the river – neither our presence nor our actions were codified by Law – but the instinct remained. Outstripped history. Called to every cell in our bodies.
‘Ngalungku,’ I said, feeling it in my gut.
‘Uwa.’
He reached over and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Hurt big, that one,’ he said.
But I didn’t answer.
Couldn’t.
Neither of us spoke. Not for ages. Not till the last of the sun had quit the rim of the gorge, the water become still.
‘We go,’ said Kata, patting my shoulder.
I hauled myself up.
Took a last long look at the towering rock, the moon a half-turned face above the ridge. At the old river gum guarding the far end from where the water would rush, when the rains came and it ran once more.
Tipping my head at the gorge, I followed Kata out.
70
You were always the first to jump. Your feet would grip the edge of the rock, our breath held collectively as the clouds parted and the river swelled. You never looked – you knew the water was there, trusted it would catch you, no matter what – always leapt with your hands high above your head as if, in case of error, you might climb your way back up the sky. I’d watch you from the bluff, monitor your fall – your sudden entry, the white spume on the surface where you’d passed through. Wind holding me back, I’d lean over and wait, those stretched seconds, always this sick feeling in my gut – just me and the gulls, the rising and falling swell – till suddenly you’d burst through, glistening, the water flinging from your hair like a rotary blade. You’d seek me out, squint against the light. See me peering over the edge. And without fail, you’d grin and shout, Come on, ya bastard! Your voice in my head, I’d gauge the swell, imagine the impact on the soles of my feet, what angle I’d need to jump to miss you, you treading water below, head and shoulders and piloting arms, the rest of you invisible. Just don’t think about it! you’d yell above the gulls. And I’d jump, hands clasped over my balls, the wind and the sky and the river merging briefly with my doubt before the slap and the roar. The cold waking me to myself, that instant when you’re not sure which way is up. The fizzing that announces your arrival. And you’d be there, just a little way off, a slave to the river’s surge, scraping handfuls off the surface and lobbing them into my face. Telling me that next time I’d jump without looking, fuck the risk.
That the river would always be there to catch me.
71
Nara was sitting on the threshold, Roopie playing in the yard with his cousin’s kelpie-cross that he’d coaxed over with a chop bone. Nara seemed to be the only one in town without a dog, though there were more than enough spares to go around.
We’d all slept in. Nara and Roopie had arrived home late from their maku expedition, well after Kata had left, Roopie asleep in Nara’s arms.
She leant into the steam from her chipped mug as if seeking some reason there to join the day, the string from the teabag hassled by the breeze. I watched the boy but kept her on the periphery, the way she gulped the hot liquid with such indifference her mouth could’ve been made of asbestos. Despite the tracksuit and the beanie, she was unambiguously feminine – the escaped curls, curving mouth, long fingers. The zip of her hoodie undone enough to reveal some cleavage.
Leading away from the verandah were Kata’s footprints. He’d stayed for a bit after he’d dropped me off the day before, drunk two cups of tea. Told me a story about sleeping out in the desert with his grandparents when he was a little boy, how much he’d loved it, pressed up ag
ainst his dog for warmth, the fires that had burnt all night. He’d said he wanted it to be like that all the time, the old ones singing and telling stories. That it was one of the reasons he’d done what he did, help to bring everybody back. He’d also talked about his days working on a station near the James Ranges, where he’d met his first wife and where his first son had been born. How he’d won the local horse race three years in a row and still had the ribbons. Encouraged by his stories, I’d asked him how he’d become a healer. Kata had held out his hands palm up and scraped one across the other, said his grandfather had taught him ngangkariku iwara, the way of the ngangkari, when he was still only a boy. That he sometimes travelled long distances to treat people and was thinking about going to Alice to do ‘one of them whitefella courses’ so he could get paid for his work. I’d offered to cook him dinner, more than glad of his company, but he’d promised his friend he’d get the car back before dark. After he’d left, the wait for Nara and Roopie’s return had seemed a long one. I’d lit a fire, but for some reason the night had closed in with an emptiness no flame could fill.
Nara sipped her tea, her eyes always on the boy. The coffee she’d made for me sat untouched between us.
‘Uwa,’ she said finally, flicking the porcelain with her nail.
She exhaled and glanced sideways as if waiting for me to catch up, but I had no idea what she was affirming.
‘I followed him to Alice,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I went to Alice after he left, to see if I could find him. But he wasn’t there anymore.’
‘Oh.’
‘They said he went south.’
‘He must’ve already been on his way back. I got a text from him when he was on the road. I tried to call him but he was out of range.’
Nara nodded, wound the string from the teabag around her finger.
‘He didn’t call me,’ she said.
I chewed my lip. There was no reception at Ininyingi, but there was the phone at the store, other ways.
‘The text didn’t say much,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t know then about … all this.’
Roopie cried out, more from joy than pain going by the massive grin on his face. He and the dog were wrestling over the bone, both of them sprawled in the dirt. Between them they’d raised so much dust that the sky around them was tinted orange, air and earth confused. One of them yelped, dislodging a magpie lark from its perch on the wire fence. The boy disentangled his arm from the jaws of his playmate, grabbed hold of the dog’s head and stroked it over and over as if trying to stretch its skin. Bone at its feet, the dog sat stoic, a marble version of itself, twitching only at flies. Nara watched all this, her finger massaging the corrugation on her forehead from the beanie.
‘Did you see him?’ she asked.
‘No, I was working in Sydney. I meant to get back to him, but you know how it is.’
The excuse felt pathetic, even before it quit my mouth. Nara made a clucking noise.
‘I know, I should’ve at least called him,’ I said, flicking an ant off the mug. ‘Five fucking minutes is all it would’ve taken!’
Nara shuddered. Her hand went once more to the beanie, like someone might touch the gold cross around their neck. It made her look older, less attractive, like she’d already given up.
‘Why do you always wear that thing?’ I asked her, suddenly annoyed.
Her eyes dropped at the edges as if sleep was already reclaiming her.
At her foot was a small rock. She picked it up, measured its weight, and for a moment I thought it was destined for the dog that kept nipping at Roopie’s hand. Instead, she raised it to her face, as if divining something in its surface. She allowed her hand to drop. Then brought it once more towards her forehead, this time with force, the rock stopping just short of her skin. She repeated this action, her arm dropping and rising with increasing strength.
Afraid she’d miscalculate, I reached out and grabbed her wrist.
The rock fell to the ground with a dull thud. The dog looked to where it had landed. I let go of her wrist. Pushed back the hem of the beanie. The wound was days old and caked in ragged blood, about the size of a fifty-cent coin. The bruise that receded into her hairline was visible only in its smoothness against her dark skin.
Nara lowered her eyes.
‘How did he die?’ she asked.
I slid the beanie back into place.
‘He took his own life,’ I said. ‘At least, that’s what they told me.’
She didn’t seem to understand at first, but then she let out a groan as if she’d been punched, and I felt the cowardice of the phrase. Its overriding violence. To take your own life and do what with it? Shed it like an unseasonable skin, one that’s grown too heavy, unbearable in the heat. Or offer it up to someone, to something – in exchange for what? Love? Redemption? But all that seemed too rooted in a belief system he didn’t ascribe to. At least not the Jed I’d known.
Nara leant down.
Closed her fingers around the rock.
As she lifted it, I watched. Measured the force behind the movement, the speed, the trajectory. The sound that it made, different to what I’d expected.
More hollow.
Less satisfyingly visceral.
Again it hit, everything about her bent around the action, the beanie pushed back now to reveal the full extent of the wound. But it was the repetition I couldn’t stand. Its proof that no matter how often we return, if we don’t change something core, the result will always be the same.
‘Don’t,’ I said, her wrist bony in my hand.
The rock hung motionless, no longer a weapon or an instrument of lament, just a bloodied thing formed at the bottom of a sea or spat out of a volcano lifetimes ago. Blameless as the wind.
I loosened her fingers and removed it. Threw it away.
She shielded her eyes, from me or the sun, her hand disrupting the line of blood. This new wound had been inflicted in the same place as the old one, as if of all the points on her body this was the only one capable of bearing witness. Or maybe this was part of the ritual. There were so many things I didn’t know.
Nara didn’t look at me.
She barely breathed.
So I waited, dust settling on the pallid surface of the coffee. Waited for the boy or the dog or the magpie lark – some kind of messenger – to explain the rock.
How it too had failed us.
72
Nara went to her room and stayed there, Roopie gone with May, off on business, something to do with a mother and a baby recently returned from Alice where the mother had been to give birth. I took up residence in my usual spot on the verandah, tried reading for a bit, but as morning slunk into afternoon and Nara still didn’t emerge, I began to itch for something to do. Felt that old yen to get moving.
My thoughts turned to my car, still stuck out near the Kaltukatjara road, probably already a home for lizards. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of it over the last few days. Felt a gulf. It was time to go and get it. There was no garage in town, but I’d heard there were a few bush mechanics around who had a way with coathangers and trouser belts, who knew how to stuff a flat tyre with spinifex if they ran out of spares. I figured the best person to ask would be Cliff.
He was out the front of his place, filling a plastic jerry can from the tap. The young guy I’d met that first night was with him, wearing the same Bob Marley tank top. Cliff looked happy to see me.
‘You guys going somewhere?’ I asked, noticing a pile of blankets in the back of the ute.
‘Uwa. Areyonga, then Alice,’ said Cliff, with that way he had of muting the s sound that had no place in Pitjantjatjara.
‘You heading back to the main road?’
‘Wiya. We going on tracks,’ he said, winking. ‘Secret way.’
‘Shame. I was thinking of trying to get my car going.’
‘You leaving?’
‘Nah.’
Cliff ’s shoulders relaxed. He would’ve been
crap at poker.
‘Timing belt?’ he asked.
‘Yep.’
‘You can ring them fellas in Yulara, ask ’em to come get it, but big money. More money than that car you got. Old one, that one.’
‘But a good one.’
He laughed, his back teeth exposed.
‘You come to Alice with me. Buy that timing belt, palya? Get a ride back with that clinic lady, Janice. You know her? She up there.’
Cliff ’s offer made sense, especially as my finances were already strained.
‘You know how to change a timing belt?’ I asked him.
‘Uwa, me and this fella done it before. Got one of them things you need to lift the engine.’
‘Block and tackle.’
‘That one. Got it when them gov’ment fellas closed the garage down.’
He threw a glance at the boy that spoke volumes, ones filled with the kind of policies that were written thousands of kilometres away from where they were implemented, by people – what had Thaddeus said? – who didn’t know their Yankuntjatjara from their Luritja.
‘When you leaving?’ I asked.
‘Now.’
‘Ah, I can’t. Still got things to do here.’
He shrugged. ‘Plenty people go to Alice. You ask at the store. Only place got petrol.’
‘Thanks for the offer, though. Appreciate it.’
Cliff hoisted the jerry can into the tray of the ute. Said something to the boy, who flexed his eyebrows and sauntered off to the house.
‘Uwa,’ said Cliff.
‘Isn’t he going with you?’
‘I take you to your car.’
‘You sure?’
‘Uwa. Maybe we fix it. Maybe we bring back.’
‘Thanks. Can we stop by Nara’s on the way? I need to grab my keys.’