by Anna Krien
‘Yeah, Jack pointed them out.’
Eileen smiled. ‘Ah, Jack, he’s a lovely boy. Well, every couple of days Bert shows up here asking for an old painting to sell down in Yulara and then hits up the IGA for dog food. I’m not meant to, goes against my contract, helping him panhandle paintings. Devalues the whole lot.’
They reached the street and Robbie stopped to admire the sky. The colours rippled like the pearly underside of an abalone shell. ‘So why do you?’ she asked. ‘Help him?’
Eileen shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Not sure I could say no to old Bert. He’s a warrior man, you know? Knows the old ways, Cathy says – you met Cathy yet?’ Robbie shook her head. ‘Cathy’s the main nurse here, clever girl, strong, a bit stand-offish. Anyway, Cathy says Bert’s got all the old scars: all the initiation nicks up his arms, on his chest. Patterns she’s never seen on anyone else. You seen body markings, the desert ones?’ Again, Robbie shook her head. ‘Well, it looks like grains of rice arranged under the skin, and the more elaborate the pattern, the more important you are. That’s what’s said. Bert’s might not have been that elaborate back then. But he’s the only one left who had it done that way, pre-contact.’
‘Pre-contact?’ Robbie said doubtfully.
‘Sort of,’ Eileen said. ‘I been told he came in as a child to Hermannsburg, the mission, but he’d often leave with his parents, go back to country. Store their mission clothes inside a tree hollow.’
‘Jesus,’ Robbie said.
Eileen smiled. She nodded towards Uluru. The massive rock hulked on the horizon. ‘You been yet?’
‘No.’ It was burnt orange when they had entered the arts centre. Now it was a deep red, the sky vast and violet. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
‘Uh huh,’ Eileen said knowingly. They were walking along the street Jack had driven in on. Robbie stopped when they came near the cages with the dogs. ‘Can we have a look?’
Eileen tilted her head. ‘Sure. It’s pretty stinky. Hold your nose.’ They walked over the dry grass. One dog popped its head up and, seeing them, it threw itself against the fence, whining. Instantly the others did the same, emerging from car wrecks that had been chucked in there for shade, barking and nipping at one another to get in front. They pressed their snouts to the fence; mangy patches of mostly brindle hair stuck through the wire. Ribs rippled against their skin and open sores wept pus, thick with flies. Most of the bitches had heavy bellies and raw-looking teats dragging near the ground.
‘What are the Xs for?’ Robbie asked. Every dog had a pink X spray-painted on its side. On the drive back with Jack from the sorry rocks, there had been an upside-down cow, a bloated corpse, on the side of the road. It, too, had the sign on its side.
Eileen had her blouse over her nose. ‘To mark them out from the healthy dogs,’ she said in a muffled voice. Robbie pinched her nose and stared. The dogs were snarling now that they understood the women didn’t have food.
‘Ugh!’ said Eileen, walking away, gagging. ‘I can’t stand it.’
Back on the street, they gulped in air. Robbie shook her head. ‘That’s pretty fucked up.’
Eileen snorted. ‘That’s an understatement. There’s about fifty, sixty dogs in there. Do you know how many dogs they didn’t mark? Ten. Ten measly so-called healthy dogs.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Hiding.’
Robbie was confused. ‘Huh? What do you mean?’
Eileen started walking. ‘We’d better hurry if we want to grab you some food.’
About a hundred metres away was a squat building with two petrol bowsers out front. In the doorway hung faded rubber strips to keep out the flies. A bunch of kids sat nearby, stretching jelly snakes. Robbie recognised Lenny.
‘Before the vets came,’ Eileen said, ‘no one here, not even us at the workers’ units, saw much difference between the so-called healthy dogs and the sick ones, but after, when them ten dogs got their shots, wormed and sent on their way, locals started to hate them.’
‘Why?’ said Robbie.
Eileen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe they saw a little bit of history repeating itself. You know, full-bloods go over there’ – she pointed to the cages – ‘and the rest go and join them’ – she pointed to their units behind the fence. ‘People started kicking them healthy dogs, flicking embers at them when they came sniffing around the fires, so the dogs ended up staying with us. Now the locals call them stuck-up gubba dogs.’
They reached the shop. The kids scampered around the corner and stared back at them. Robbie waved to Lenny. He beamed and whispered to his friends.
Eileen stopped at the bowsers. ‘You want to have dinner at mine when you’re done here? You eat meat? I can do a spaghetti bolognese.’
Robbie nodded. ‘That’d be great.’
*
Over time, Robbie’s father had become less agitated, more settled, accepting of his fate. He was no longer moved by Robbie; she, Otis and Claire were simply fishy shadows in the gloom of his murky world. But still, Robbie had been uneasy about leaving for three months. It was bad timing, the sorry rocks project. Claire and Nathan were also going away. They had booked a cruise two years before, and Robbie understood her mother needed the holiday. No one said it, but the truth was that her father was supposed to be dead by now. Each of the past five Christmases was meant to be his last, but the years rolled on. His face got craggier and his hair bushy and grey. Would her father only die, she wondered, when he resembled the man he was meant to be? Not the part-Italian he’d been told he was by his foster parents, not Danny, but a Wurundjeri man. Possibly Wathaurung, too.
It was Beverley who had thrown that into the mix, the Wathaurung.
‘Really?’ Claire said. ‘What about his father? We thought he might have been white, a Scot?’
‘Half,’ Beverley replied. ‘Maybe a third.’
Bev hadn’t been to see him for a long time. She’d been sick, her daughters said when Claire rang. It was too hard for her to travel into the city by herself now.
Otis would be around while Robbie was away. But Otis was useless, Robbie bitched to her mother. Claire didn’t say anything, although Robbie could tell her mother was wavering on the holiday. ‘I’ll talk to Sabeen,’ she offered, recalling how well her friend had gotten on with her father, right from the time they’d met.
Claire brightened. ‘Yes!’ she gushed. ‘That would be wonderful. Danny likes her. Do you think she’d like to? We could pay her?’
*
Robbie sat with Eileen on the verandah, each balancing a bowl of spaghetti on their lap.
‘I saw Bert,’ Robbie said, ‘and the girl, feeding the dogs.’ She’d been on her way back to the units with groceries when she saw the red Mazda. She stopped and watched as the old man put a knife through the plastic bags of dried food, then dragged them over, tossing handfuls through the fence. The noise was deafening, a high-pitched barking and squealing as the dogs fought over the scraps. The girl followed, picking up bits Bert had dropped and pressing them through the fence. She had straggly hair and was wearing an extra-large hoodie as if to hide her breasts, her legs skinny as two cigarettes. Thirteen, maybe fourteen, Eileen had said, when Robbie asked how old the girl was.
‘Viv,’ said Eileen. ‘She’s his granddaughter, or great-granddaughter. Don’t know which.’
Twirling the spaghetti around her fork, Robbie was quiet for a bit. A couple of stuck-up gubba dogs came over, smelling the food, and settled under their chairs. Robbie played with one’s ears, feeling the burrs stuck in the fur. ‘When will they do it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Eileen. ‘Gotta be soon, though. If the vets reckoned they were bad for your health before, it’ll be ten times worse now. You smelt it.’ Robbie nodded. ‘But it’ll finish him off,’ Eileen added. ‘Bert. I reckon it will.’ They were quiet as they considered whether sixty flea-bitten dogs was an acceptable price to pay for a man who remembered the old times. Then Eileen sighed. ‘Don’t feel too sorry
for the bastard. I’ve heard he was a nasty piece of work in his time. Put a star picket through his wife’s thigh. Blood-let her like a pig.’
‘Serious?’
Eileen chortled, enjoying Robbie’s naivety. ‘Oh, honey, you’ll see. You find me a woman out here with all her teeth and I’ll give you a fifty.’
In the dark, down the path, the gate creaked. Over the week Robbie would meet all six workers who stayed in the units. There was Brix, the pool maintenance guy from Coober Pedy, and Brian and Pattie, husband and wife, who taught the primary-school kids and wore gold crosses on thin necklaces. Cathy, a former ICU nurse from Sydney, friendly but always busy, was up before sunrise, cooped in the stuffy health clinic all day and sometimes well into the night. She worked ten days straight and then flew out for a week or so, a replacement flying in. Robbie got the sense that Cathy partied hard on her week off; on her return there’d be a speediness to her talk and a clammy odour. And finally, there was Quinn the Prick. His job mostly seemed to be about tracking locals down for their signatures on funding applications.
It was with Quinn that Robbie reluctantly hitched a lift to Uluru. His 4WD was laced with empty cans of Sprite and he had the air-con on full blast. As he wound around the serpent of bitumen, Robbie shivered. She hugged her arms over her T-shirt, worrying that her nipples were showing.
Quinn insisted she see the cultural centre first. In the cool dark passageways he made sure she read every board and took in every film. By the time he pulled into the main car park at the base of Uluru, it was full of tourist buses and campervans. Palya, read a sign. Welcome.
When he undid his seatbelt as if to join her, Robbie couldn’t bear it. ‘No!’ she yelped. Quinn looked at her, startled. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘I’d like to do this on my own.’ He pouted, and Robbie felt a stab of fury that she’d had to rely on him in the first place. ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said stiffly, opening her door.
‘I can pick you up here at three,’ he said.
‘It’s okay. I don’t need a lift.’
Quinn looked at her. ‘How you getting back then?’ he asked.
‘Jack,’ Robbie said, the lie coming easy. ‘Jack’s going to take me.’
Quinn raised his eyebrows.
‘Bye,’ Robbie said, slamming the door. Her water bottle was in there, she remembered, down the side of the seat, but she couldn’t bear the thought of calling out to Quinn to stop. Instead she kept walking, twitching with anger that she’d gotten there so late. Flies buzzed in her face and she picked up a twig, whipping at the insects with its dry leaves. The car park was loud with chatter. A group of sweaty Japanese tourists rested in the shade of a tree; others whirred along the path on Segways, seesawing on the ridiculous machines. In front of her, at the base of Uluru, was a little wooden gate. The entrance to the climb. Robbie saw a line of people ascending the flank of the magnificent red rock, a row of ants with their shiny antennae – cameras, sunglasses, phones – glinting. She scowled at them, then turned, following the path southwards.
As she got further away from the car park, she allowed herself to look up, and the rock swept over her. It was beautiful, the mammoth orange curves sculpted like limbs, the insides of thighs carved by thousands of years of wind and rain. Stripes of black algae ran down the rock’s rivulets, markings left behind from the rainy season. There were overhanging lips, and sandy shelters, while signs indicated that this was where bread was made, this was where business was conducted, and so on.
Ahead, Robbie saw tourists gathered on a metal grate over a waterhole. A woman in khaki shorts and a T-shirt lay there on her back, staring at the rock. Robbie stepped around her and leaned on the railing. Tadpoles darted in the weeds. Beside her a sign read, Close your eyes here and feel a connection to this special place. All Robbie could feel was her head throb. Her jaw was clenched, she realised, and sore, as though she had been chewing gum for hours.
The grate creaked as a man rounded up the tourists. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep going.’ And with a wink, he glanced at Robbie. ‘It’s all yours now.’
Robbie watched them disappear around the bend before quickly cupping handfuls of water, slurping it up. She popped three Panadol from their silver foil and swallowed, then tore the corner off a sachet of electrolyte rehydrates and poured the powder into her mouth. She emptied a ziplock bag of dried fruit and nuts into her pockets, and filled the bag from the waterhole, scooping out twitching black specks.
Refreshed, she kept walking, and eventually began to feel as though she were on her own. She started to notice small things: the flit of finches, the husks of desert lantern flowers, the boot-sized anthills on the path, with rectangle slits at the top like coin slots. A thin wire had been put around the rock to keep visitors to the left of it, only letting people peer into shady overhangs, and there were more signs, telling where seeds were ground into a flour, and so on, every piece of information seeking to convey a sense of the sacred.
But really, it was just memories, Robbie thought. Like, here we prepared dinner, here we napped in the heat of the day, here we picnicked, here we met to talk about serious issues, here the kids came to collect skinks. Here was where we hid from the big dust storm. Not as unknowable as it was made out to be. To Robbie it felt like a beautiful ghost town, happiness and sadness lingering in every fold and overhang.
She came to another waterhole and paused to lie on the grate. She let her fingers trail in the water, flicking it up, wetting her face. The branches of a small lush tree dappled the walkway with shade. Looking to check no one was coming, she inched forward and dunked her head.
‘Do the locals ever get to hang out at Uluru?’ she had asked Eileen. ‘It seems like it’s always being used by the tourists.’
Eileen had smiled a secret smile. ‘Oh, yeah. Out the back, the kids often go to the dunes, kick a footy, ride their bikes. People go after the gates are locked, too.’ She laughed, adding, ‘Mostly for mobile reception. Plus it doesn’t happen so often now we’ve got the pool, but the kids sometimes nick off through the scrub and go in the back way – it’s quicker than driving in – to swim in the waterhole. The dogs used to go with them too, before the vets.’
Robbie let her hair drip down her back, jealous that she couldn’t slip into the water like the kids. She dangled her fingertips, tadpoles moving in for a nibble. The race was on for them, one sign read, to turn into frogs before the water receded. Then they would burrow down deep into the ground, sleep until the next rain. Feeling sleepy herself, Robbie urged her body to get up and keep walking, wondering how she would get back to the community. She decided she would try to join the kids next time she saw them heading out for a swim, learn the best way through the scrub so she wouldn’t have to rely on Quinn.
On the last leg of the walk, Robbie caught up with an odd-looking man, tufts of hair sticking through the holes in his straw hat. When she encountered him, in a small clearing, he was pushing back the nose of his spectacles, held together with tape, as he busily scribbled in a notebook. Robbie saw he was drawing diagrams of sediment, layers of rock, numbering down the margin, his tiny script scrawled around the edges. When he saw her looking, he explained he was a retired geologist – used to work for a mining company, tin and nickel. ‘Did you know,’ he said, pointing to Uluru, ‘it’s like an iceberg? Most of it is underneath us.’
Robbie didn’t know. She stared at the red rock. Up close, you could only see it in sections, curves and ridges. ‘It’s just the tip,’ he explained, ‘what we can see.’ Robbie shook her head in wonder. She walked back the rest of the way with the geologist. He told her facts that seemed more magical than scientific. ‘It’s actually grey, you know,’ he said, ‘the rock. It’s just the surface that’s burnt orange – surface iron oxidisation, it’s called.’
When they reached the car park, he drove her to the start of the road leading into the community, and as she waved to him she felt lighter, more in control. Walking in, a few kids caught up with her, including
Lenny, who ran off and reappeared with a hot can of Coke. ‘You are a cheetah,’ she said as she clicked it open and gulped down the sweet fizzy drink. The sky was pink, the sand was a burst of scarlet, and the kids were wild with energy. They leapt about, and Robbie mucked around and joked with them, shrugging off her backpack at the gate. A couple of times she looked to the horizon, catching the eye of Uluru.
The park gates would be shut by now, she knew. Chairs and white-clothed tables would be set up on the outskirts, crackers, cheese and flutes of champagne ready for top-dollar tourists to watch the sunset, while others stood on the bonnets of their hire cars to take the perfect photo. But inside the gates, it was like a brief reprieve for Uluru. Robbie could have sworn she saw the rock breathe out, but later the thought occurred that it was possibly her. Her head had stopped throbbing.
That evening, the kids showed off their skills, first back-flipping off a stack of old spring mattresses, then flicking a flame into life and cascading it into the long grass, stamping it out with their feet when it flared. Sometimes an adult would call into the dark and one of the kids would leave, but return a few minutes later. Robbie asked if they’d take her the next time they swam at Uluru, ignoring a stern voice in her head – Quinn’s, perhaps, maybe Mooney’s – that said she should really be asking one of the elders. The children grinned and said they would.
*
Lenny was seven. He liked being called Cheetah and became useful in rallying the troops for Robbie’s art classes. It was far more difficult with the teenagers. Each time she approached, they had an uncanny skill of receding, slipping behind each other, eyes downcast as they weaved backwards until she was on her own again, talking to no one. Lenny and the kids were definitely easier to inspire. They crowded around in the arts centre when she tried to teach them Photoshop and copied her, clicking the mouses with happy concentration. She showed them how to make fantastical creatures. ‘See,’ Robbie said, ‘you can use construction cranes for legs, ocean waves for wings, a silver colander for a head.’ After the first session Robbie printed their work and suggested they put it on their walls at home. The children nodded, with gappy grins, tumbling out the door. Robbie felt triumphant; she had connected.