‘Cockburn.’
‘With a “ck”?’ He grinned. ‘He told me Wireless was the only one there when it happened.’
‘Maybe, but the weather that day was something chronic. The Green Swamp crowd were lolling around in an alcoholic stupor and staring into the sun. Most of em couldn’t have told their arses from their armpits.’
He didn’t seem convinced.
‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘I’d just like to know more about Doc. What made him tick…’
‘Tick! Dunno if tick’s the word. Detonate, maybe. Worse the last year or so—the tumour, I presume: mind on the rampage, body trying to keep up.’
‘Any enemies you know of? He and Wireless might have had the odd philosophical argument, but they were mates. Was there anybody he really pissed off?’
Wishy swept his hands through the air in a gesture of futility.
‘Was there anybody he didn’t piss off? He worked for just about every employer in the Territory: most of the major mining companies, the Geo Survey, Copperhead. Sooner or later, they all decided he was a liability. How long since you’d seen him?’
I shrugged. ‘Fifteen years, at least.’
‘And how do you remember him?’
‘A little eccentric.’
‘Exactly. Take that, add twenty years of confusion, booze and brutal weather, bung in a brain tumour and Albie’s what you got.’
‘Completely loopy,’ I nodded.
‘Bullshit!’ The disembodied word came shooting through the window. Tiger Lily appeared, her eyes damp and full of glare. ‘He was the smartest man in the world, my Uncle Albie.’
Wishy rose from his chair, went across and knelt by the window, took her little hand in his big one.
‘Course he was, honey. Emily knows that. He was just unwell. Like I told you. He had this…thing, growing in his brain, made him get a little mixed up.’
She backed off, but her lower lip was wobbling.
I came over. ‘I’m sorry, Tiger Lily. It’s just my big mouth. I met your uncle when I was about your age, and I thought he was wonderful—full of surprises—showing me things that made my hair stand on end.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure.’
‘What?’ She clenched her jaw, suspicious, braced herself for adult condescension.
‘Like—er…’ I remembered the trilobite, pulled the chain over my head and held it out to her. ‘Like this.’
A spark of interest. ‘What is it?’
‘Something very special. It used to be a tiny animal, crawling across the ocean floor.’
She gave me the fuckwit look.
‘I meant what period is it from? Most of them round here are Cambrian, but there are Silurians as well.’
I took a step back. ‘Oh. I see. Precambrian, I think. Who taught you about fossils?’
Again, the withering glare. ‘Who do you think?’
‘Your Uncle Albie?’
‘Yes, and that wasn’t all…I’ve got a hundred and twenty-seven specimens in my collection, spread over three hundred million years. Did you know that…’
‘Not now Tiger,’ interrupted her father. ‘Emily and I need to talk.’
She kept her gaze on the fossil.
‘You know Tiger,’ I said, ‘Doc gave this to me, and I bet nothing would have made him happier than to know that I’d passed it on to you.’ I pressed it into her hand, folded her fingers over it. ‘Why don’t you go out and start the game? When I’ve finished I’ll come and show you how it’s done.’
‘Pig’s arse you will.’
Her father and I watched her go, the little fossil tucked into her shirt.
‘Well-spoken child, that,’ I commented.
‘Hung around too many bloody Works camps.’ But he was smiling as he said it.
As she walked out onto the lawn, a cluster of kids accreted to her. Tiger Lily obviously had her father’s natural leadership. The crowd was growing. In a matter of seconds, it seemed, she was doing cartwheels in front of an appreciative audience. The Time Bomb began shooting rubber-tipped arrows through her flying limbs. I took a closer look: couldn’t see rubber tips.
I turned to Wishy. ‘You seem to have come out of a background similar to your brother’s in pretty good nick.’
‘Yeah. Well maybe that’s because he went on ahead and bore the brunt. That and the pure luck of meeting a good woman.’
‘Where’d you and Loreena hook up?’
‘On the Roper Bar. I was putting in a road. She was the bush nurse.’
I changed tack. ‘Don’t suppose your brother owned anything of value?’
‘Value! Albie? He wouldn’t have a pot to piss in. Had that prick from the pub asking me the same question the other day.’
‘Noel Redman?’
‘Reckoned Albie owed him two years back rent. Told the bastard he could shove it. Asks me what he’s gonna do with his stuff. What stuff? I asked. Couple of broken chairs? Firewood! Geordie Formwood wanted the jeep for spare parts; said he was welcome to it. I took a run out there the other day, gathered up what I could, carted most of it off to the tip. Gave Redman his bloody money.’
‘You paid Doc’s rent?’
‘Was always going to—just thought he could have waited until after the funeral to ask.’
I drained my stubbie, took a handful of chips. Munched them thoughtfully.
‘I noticed Doc had a filing cabinet. What happened to that?’
He studied me. ‘You are a hard case, aren’t you?’
‘Don’t like leaving things half done.’
He went quiet for a moment. Rose to his feet. ‘Comes to some bastard killing my brother and trying to shift the blame onto an old man, neither do I.’
Weirder by the year
HE LED ME INTO an adjoining office. There in a corner sat the battered filing cabinet I’d seen in Doc’s room at Green Swamp Well.
‘Been wondering what to do with this lot. You look like you’ll make more sense out of it than I’m likely to.’ He glanced at my glass. ‘Top-up?’
‘Maybe a cup of tea? Strong and black.’
‘On the way. Might check up on the little monsters while I’m at it.’
He left the room, and I opened the middle drawer. Silverfish and sand came scuttling and trickling out, closely followed by the musty odour of moth-eaten paper. The junk that most lives come down to in the end.
And junk this lot certainly was: postcards from a journey that had grown weirder by the year. I spent a fascinating ten minutes ploughing through it: field notes, photographs, sketches and maps, the odd crumbling geological sample, magnetic images he’d brought with him from his time at the Geological Survey.
A little eccentric Doc might have been, but his filing system was accurate and comprehensive, a mass of papers and canvas-covered notebooks, all neatly stored in thick blue folders and ordered according to topic.
I quickly saw what his goal had been: to carry out a comprehensive survey of the Fuego Desert. He’d traversed it from east to west, recorded rock types, geological ages, erosion and landforms. He’d mapped glaciers, ranges, ridges and water fields.
But over the past year, his imagination had gone off at all sorts of tangents. I skimmed through his observations on nardoo root and its potential to solve the world food crisis, sketches and samples of wild grasses that he thought could be domesticated; blueprints for an array of eccentric devices: a whistle-detonated explosive, a hat with solar-powered air-conditioning and a saucepan that stirred itself.
By the end, it appeared, things were totally out of whack and he’d decided that time was going backwards. He scribbled timelines in which the geological ages of the Earth were reversed, drew sketches of mountains sinking back into the earth, continents drifting together, lava flowing uphill. He proposed a solution to the problem of Grand Unified Theory, made sketches for a time machine—powered by tektites.
Madness. Fascinating, although more from a literary than a scientific perspective. King Lear m
eets Edward Lear, with a dash of Heath Robinson. But there was something missing.
‘Snowballs,’ I said to Wishy when he came back in with laden arms. ‘You said he was obsessed with the Snowball Earth Theory, but I can’t find anything about it.’
‘You sure?’ He lowered the tray, poured me a cup of tea. ‘He wouldn’t shut up about it.’
‘Positive. Look at S—nothing in there at all. Hang on…’ I took a closer look.
‘Yes?’
‘Feel the file.’
He ran a finger along the divider, felt the bend in the metal frame, the bulge of the sides of the folder. Observed, as I had done, the wear and tear, the pattern in the dust. Came to the same conclusion I had.
‘There was something there.’
‘Question is, did Albie take it out—or did somebody else?’
‘Wasn’t in the shack, I can tell you that—I cleaned the place inside out. All of his papers were in the cabinet.’
‘So where is it?’
He shrugged.
I made to replace the empty file. Caught a glimpse of something—a glossy triangle of paper on the floor of the drawer. Fished it out. It was a photograph, very old, yellowing: a rocky outcrop, somewhere in the desert. A stand of she-oaks, a drift of sand.
‘Recognise this place?’
He studied it. ‘Pile of rocks on a plain,’ he said flatly. ‘Seen a few of them in my time. Nothing to distinguish it from all the others, though.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Unless…’
He went across to his desk. Took out a magnifying glass, peered at the photo. Pulled a 250 survey map from a drawer, examined it, humming and mumbling to it in a way that made it clear he thought of maps as living things.
A lot of elders I’ve known think the same about another sort of map, the ones they sing.
‘In the background there.’ He ran a finger across the horizon. ‘Pretty sure it’s the southern end of the Ricketswood Ranges—from the west. Did a bit of scouting around for a quarry out there one time. If I’m right, then I’d say this photo was taken somewhere in the south-western stretches of the Fuego.’
‘That narrows it down—a bit.’
Not a lot, though. Still thousands of square kilometres of spinifex to choose from.
Wishy obviously knew the roads, but who knew the off-roads? Who’d be able to distinguish this outcrop from hundreds of others spread across the desert?
The Kantulyu, of course. The desert people. The mob from Stonehouse Creek, Magpie and Meg. Danny Brambles’ grandparents, the couple I’d met out on the road that first day on the job.
I turned the photo over. A scribbled note: ice rocks/ the cap carbonates/ the question of age.
I read the words a second time: they were the only remaining trace in the entire cabinet of the theory that had supposedly obsessed Doc. Ice rocks were boulders that had fallen from a frozen overlay of ice above; whether or not they supported the Snowball Theory depended on their age, and the strata in which they were found.
‘What did Albie tell you about this snowball business?’
‘What didn’t he tell me about it! He was like a burst water main. Impossible to distinguish from all the other bullshit, of course. Last time I saw him…’
‘When was that?’
Did Wishy look a little uncomfortable, or was it my imagination?
‘Day before he died.’
‘What?’
‘I did mention it to your boss. I was coming back from Alice, popped out to the shack. I’d do that every so often, see how he was getting on.’
‘And how was he getting on?’
‘Shithouse. Crankier than ever. Confused. Used to try to persuade him to come in and stay with us, but I’d given up by then: would have had to drag him in by the scruff. Rough bloody set-up he had there, but it was what he was used to. And he had his rocks out back, of course.’
‘Ah yes, the rock pile in the yard—I was going to ask you about that. Do you know what he was up to there?
‘I asked him about it, sure—he was wearing himself out throwing a lot of rocks and mud together. I presumed it was part of his ongoing obsession with the Fuego—trying to solve some geological riddle or other. When he was with the Geo Survey, he was always making models. Do it with computers nowadays, of course, but Albie said you had to feel the geology with your hands. I must admit he was pretty bloody hush-hush about this one, though. He’d get this furtive glimmer in his eyes…’
‘Furtive?’
‘Paranoid, almost.’ The second time I’d heard that said about Doc. ‘What he was afraid of, god knows. Then he’d start rabbiting on about nardoo root or Greek philosophy or whatever was-ooohhff!’ Wishy picked up the tennis ball that had just landed in his crotch, and traced its flight path back through the window.
I stood up; the crowd outside was growing thicker by the minute.
‘Looks like they’re trying to tell us something.’
‘I’m surprised it was just a tennis ball—and that the window was open.’
I made my way to the door. ‘Better give em a bit of a knock before dinner.’
Hit for six
WHILE WISHY AND I had been talking, the twins had organised the cream of the neighbourhood—among them a possum-eyed charmer in a crimson dress, a tall boy on a short horse and a hotwired kelpie—into a cricket team.
The younger of Wishy’s sons was pushing a roller up and down an ant-bed pitch, the other was organising fielding practice.
‘Where’s Simone?’ asked Wishy.
‘Where do you reckon?’ moaned Tiger Lily. ‘Simmie!’
Everybody’s eyes turned skyward, and the pallid face of the older daughter emerged from the tree-house.
‘Can’t a person ever get a bit of peace and quiet around this madhouse?’
‘Come on, Sim,’ said her father. ‘Can’t spend your life with your nose in a book.’
Spend her life with her nose in a book seemed to be exactly what Simone wanted to do, but she was eventually persuaded to join in the game. More or less. She took up a fielding position on the fence and lowered her book only when the ball was in her immediate vicinity. She was wearing a long blue dress that failed to conceal her spindly legs.
As guest of honour I was invited to bowl the first ball. Tiger Lily took strike, eyed me hungrily. I lobbed a gentle lollipop at her—she was, after all, not much more than a toddler—and she let fly with full-blooded slog that sent the ball rocketing past my ear.
‘Six!’ she yelled. A grin, a contemptuous, told-you-so gleam in her eyes.
The kelpie dashed off after the ball, dropped it, slobber-coated, in my hand then bounced around trying to snatch it back.
My father, the mystery spinner from Green Swamp, might not have given me much, but he had taught me how to bowl. I upped the ante with my next delivery, a googly that would have taken her off-stump if she hadn’t jumped down the pitch, met it on the up and lofted it into the coolibah.
‘Nother six!’
Again, the dog. Again, the slobber and bounce.
I opted for a change of pace, and sent down a quicker ball—which was dispatched with a rattling cover drive. The ball shot across the outfield, ran up the veranda steps and startled another dog, a yellow one dozing by the door.
‘How old did you say this kid was?’ I grumbled to Wishy as I walked back to bowl the next delivery.
‘Seven, last time I looked. Shit!’ The ball had come fizzing back down the pitch, clunked into his ankle, and ricocheted into the outer. ‘Maybe eight…’
‘What did you raise her on?’
‘Raised herself—Coco Pops, mainly.’ He ceased hopping, rested his hands on his knees. ‘Getting a bit old for this bloody game.’
I decided I was too; figured it’d be safer fielding to the little monster than bowling at her. Soon afterwards I found myself diving for a ball that bounced off the pony boy, cut back at me and crash-landed in a pile of boxes and rocks by the garage door. I took a moment to collect myself. As I c
limbed onto my knees, I glanced at the rocks, wondering why they looked familiar.
‘Albie’s rock collection,’ said Loreena, who was weeding the garden nearby.
‘Wishy brought em in?’
‘Been at him to move the wretched things—breeding place for snakes, if nothing else.’
‘Be happy to move em if you could tell me where to put em,’ said Wishy, coming up behind us. ‘No room in the house. Couldn’t just dump em in the corner like Albie did.’
As I retrieved the ball, I shifted one of the rocks aside, then paused, my attention caught by a dull green seam running through it.
‘Interesting,’ I commented, picking the specimen up for a closer look.
‘Oh?’ asked Wishy.
‘Native copper, I think. Dad’s got a few pieces.’
‘Worth anything?’
‘Don’t think so, but you oughta get somebody to look at the collection. Might be something useful in there.’
Wishy’s eyebrows curved. ‘Been hoarding this stuff all his life, Albie. Didn’t give a rat’s arse for what it was worth—just interested in the geology.’
‘Maybe, but you never know…Dad sells the odd thing to a dealer in Melbourne. Feller by the name of Dale Cockayne.’
‘Cocaine?—just what is it he deals in?’
‘Anything mineralogical. Don’t have a number, but if you googled him…’
‘Watch it!’
The ball was coming in at head height, hard and fast. I threw up a hand. Managed to deflect it back towards Wishy, who, with a reflex remarkable for a man of his age, rolled to his left and caught it a whisker from the ground.
Tiger Lily departed with a glare and a grudging admission that the catch wasn’t bad. The Time Bomb swaggered to the crease, and she was worse. Just as aggressive, but more cunning, bristling with sneaky little cuts and pull shots that had us scurrying about like hamsters, until her stumps were finally rattled by one of the boys.
Simone was gradually persuaded to take a more active part in the game, although she was nowhere near as athletic as her siblings. They all seemed to make subtle allowances: when she gathered up the ball, the intensity of the game ebbed a little, when she had the bat, the bowling slowed. There was even a gentle lob from one of the brothers that fell sweetly into her hands.
Gunshot Road Page 8