by Anna Krien
Jay looked surprised, then smiled. He reached into the pocket of his baggy shorts, producing a fat joint. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you were half-right.’
There was a shout. Reg had reached the top. He shot a flame above his head, lighting a small piece of sky. Charlie was doing the same thing with the blowtorch in his hands. Both boys studied their flames, twisting the dials, the flares growing, rustling as if alive, burning off yellow and orange feathers. Then they twisted the dials the other way, the flares turning sunset pink and into a long cylinder of white, greenish-blue at the base, purple at the tail. Reg crouched and held the torch to the metal pole sticking out of Uluru. Charlie did the same.
‘Give this to Jez,’ Jay said, without looking at Robbie, handing her the joint. Then he held onto the chain, pulling himself up towards Reg. Robbie balanced on the rock and climbed to the girls. Their eyes were big, taking in the orange slag splattering down the rock, sparks tumbling like Catherine wheels. Shit, shit, shit, Robbie thought. This was fucking big. She looked out at the dark, wondering if she should walk back on her own. She touched Viv’s arm. ‘Viv,’ Robbie said. Viv dragged her eyes away from the flames and stared at Robbie. ‘Viv,’ she said again, ‘I shouldn’t be here.’ Jez and Rose looked at her too. ‘Seriously, guys,’ she continued, ‘this is not something I should be part of. I shouldn’t be here.’
Jez cackled. ‘Well, you’re here now.’ She reached over and plucked the joint from Robbie’s hand. Rose giggled. ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ Jez mimicked, parking the joint on her bottom lip. Rose produced a lighter and lit it. It was a kind of violence, Robbie thought, recognising the way the fourteen-year-old girl was wrenching her entire body to suck in the smoke, as if she knew no other way to receive pleasure.
Then, Jez slowly softened, her limbs loosening. She opened her eyes: warm and generous now. Lazily, she passed the joint to Rose, her slender wrist crowded with friendship bands. She smiled at Robbie and turned to face the top of Uluru. ‘Woohoo!’ she cheered, cupping her hands around her mouth. Jay peered over and waved. Jez leapt up, flicking her hair and doing a loose dance, rolling her hips. Jay grinned, waggling his hands in the air.
Then Reg appeared, further up. He knelt at a pole, applying the flame. He was already about six poles into the job, Robbie figured, working much faster than Charlie, who was still trying to cut through his first. When Reg straightened, Robbie could see a small orange ring, fat as a slug, at the base of the metal rod. ‘Everyone ready?’ he yelled and, without waiting for an answer, swung his foot and kicked the pole, snapping it at the neck. It made a dull thud as it fell, then a rattle and a clunk as the chain followed.
There was pause among the teenagers, as if the pole took a little longer to fall in their minds. Then Jay bounded over to Reg, lifting him up off the rock, the two toppling over. Jez and Rose hugged each other, and Viv climbed down to Charlie and put her arms around him. Rose nudged the joint between Robbie’s fingers and joined Jez in dancing.
Robbie looked at the joint, unsure. Viv returned, flopping beside her, watching with a small smile. ‘You want it?’ Robbie asked, offering the joint.
Viv shook her head. ‘Nah. Makes me crazy.’
The black pup scrambled onto Robbie’s lap. The boys had their heads down again, working the torches. ‘Fucking hell,’ Robbie muttered. Viv began to laugh. Robbie took a toke, then another, and lay back, resting her head on Uluru, listening to the music.
*
The stars seemed shinier now the joint was finished. Robbie’s eyes felt sticky, like the night sky was snagging on her retinas. There was a pinkish glow directly above them. ‘Is that Mars?’ she asked. The girls followed the arc of her finger, but no one said anything.
Jez lit a cigarette and lay back, her hair sprawling over the rock. ‘We can only say if it’s in the shape of an emu,’ she said dryly.
Rose elbowed her in the ribs. ‘Come on, Jez,’ she said, then looked over at Robbie. ‘There’s the emu,’ she explained, tracing her finger in the air until the outline of a long-legged bird formed in Robbie’s mind. ‘And the Seven Sisters are over there,’ she said, pointing to a cluster of extra-bright stars.
There was another clunk of the chain, this time closer to the girls, and they turned to watch the boys’ progress. Reg and Charlie had done about forty poles altogether, the gap between them getting smaller. Jay was between the two, bobbing his head to the beats.
Then the flashing blue-and-red lights appeared on the horizon.
‘Shit,’ Robbie said quietly. Everyone stopped. The girls stood when two more sets of blue-and-red lights appeared.
The first cop car stopped at the tollbooth, the other two catching up. They could see the cops standing in their headlights, looking at the boom gates, talking into their radios. One of them pointed off to the side and they got back in their cars, swerving off the road and into the scrub.
Then, to the north, the camp dogs started howling. There was a shudder of fluorescent lights in the community houses, a movement of shapes on the verandahs. The girls stiffened. ‘Mob’s up,’ Jez called. For a second everyone faltered; Robbie felt the teenagers waver.
‘It’s cool,’ Reg yelled. ‘Stay cool!’ The rest of them looked at him. ‘It’s cool,’ he said again.
Charlie nodded. He and Reg put their torches back to the poles they were working on, gas on, flame on. Hot metal spilled down the side of the rock. The three girls held hands and stared out at the community.
*
The sun was rising when the chain fell. It slithered down Uluru like a snake, poles ricocheting and catching on the odd ridge, Reg following and shifting them till they were loose, the chain slithering again. At the base, it lay coiled against the white picket gate, a nest of scrap metal, its power undone. The cop cars were waiting and the grown-ups, elders, some of the kids too. A line of buses, campervans and 4WDs stretched for a kilometre or so from the boom gates, rangers at the front, gesturing to them to turn around.
Robbie couldn’t tell if Jack was there. She climbed down carefully with the others and was ignored, left to the side at the base as the teenagers stood in a line, their eyes downcast. The adults bustled around them, speaking loudly, shoving them in the chest with the flat of their palms. A woman slapped Viv, then did the same to Jez and Rose, and Robbie was stunned, feeling a heat in her cheek as if she too had been hit. She was about to go to them when there was a tap on her shoulder. Jack.
She braced herself, expecting him to start lecturing her, but his voice was urgent. ‘Get in the car,’ he said. ‘You need to get your things. Your dad, he’s gone missing.’
*
As Jack drove, Robbie called the nursing home. She’d thrown things in a bag and had Bullant on her lap. The director explained that Danny had gone missing in the night. The police had been there and were doing everything they could to find him.
‘What do you mean he went missing?’ she asked in a tight voice. ‘What do you mean?’
The director spoke cautiously. Robbie knew instantly she had had advice on what to say. ‘When the nurse for Mr O’Farrell’s ward came in for her midnight shift, she noticed his bed was empty. Ms O’Farrell, I can assure you she raised the alarm immediately.’
Robbie exhaled sharply, covering her face with her hand.
‘Ms O’Farrell?’ said the director. ‘Are you there? We have been trying to contact you since midnight – the police have been here and have his picture. We know this must be extraordinarily difficult for you. I can assure you —’
‘I’m coming,’ Robbie interrupted. ‘Look, I’m at Uluru, it’ll take me a few hours. I’m coming.’
The phone cut off then. Looking at the screen, she saw she had zero reception. Robbie lurched, and felt as though she was going to be sick. She flung the phone down and opened her door. Jack exclaimed as he swerved, braking. The car had barely stopped when Robbie flopped out of her seat, her knees in the gravel, and retched. There was nothing in her stomach but bile. Jack got out and came over.
He held her shoulders to stop her falling flat on her face. ‘You’re okay,’ he said. ‘You’re okay.’
Robbie’s hands were shaking. She felt bloodless, clammy. She couldn’t breathe. Jack searched the floor of the car, coming back with a paper bag. He held it over her mouth, telling her to inhale. The bag buckled and inflated. In, out. It worked. Robbie felt the panic ease, the blood come back into her veins.
Carefully, Jack helped her to her feet and into the car. In the glove box, he pulled out a packet of jelly snakes, stuck together from the heat. He tugged one free and gave it to her, then another and another. Her hands stopped tingling; her colour returned. ‘You okay?’ he said. She nodded. He looked at the highway. ‘Keep going?’ Robbie nodded again, put her head back and closed her eyes. She listened to Jack call Bullant back in, felt the pup’s warmth on her lap, wet nose in her hand, as the engine started.
‘The airport won’t be open,’ Jack said. ‘We can wait there for a couple of hours til it opens and see if we can get you on a plane, or we can drive to Alice?’
‘Alice,’ Robbie said numbly.
It was a four-hour drive. Whenever a phone tower loomed close, she used the reception to work on booking a flight and send messages to Otis and her mother. At a petrol station Jack came back with coffee and a sandwich for her, a hot dog for Bullant. He looked at the clock as he turned the ignition. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘we’ll get there. We’re making good time.’
Robbie sipped the coffee, hot enough to burn her tongue, and stared out the window as they turned back onto the road and passed an enclosure of emus. ‘Thanks, Jack,’ she said. ‘For doing this.’
Jack looked at her inquiringly. ‘To be honest, I’d rather be here than there. It’s a fucking shitstorm. Everyone’s calling. Pollies, media, the whole lot.’
Robbie nodded. She thought about Viv and Jez and Rose, how they had lined up with the boys, as if they’d been expecting it, the yelling and the slapping. ‘What’s going to happen to them?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. That’s their business. I wouldn’t have a clue.’
Robbie could feel Jack looking at her, wanting to ask why she’d been there, but he didn’t. She closed her eyes, her fingers in Bullant’s fur, and fell asleep, a restless sleep, her head bumping against the window.
When Jack woke her up, they were at the airport. She stared out without moving.
‘Robbie,’ Jack said, ‘you gotta go.’ He made to lift Bullant off Robbie’s lap. She snatched the pup close. ‘Robbie,’ he said, ‘they won’t let you take him on the plane.’ She stared at him. ‘I’ll look after him for you,’ he said gently. ‘I promise.’
Robbie looked down at the dog in her arms. What if someone put a pink X on him?
‘Robbie,’ Jack said, his voice strained. ‘You’ll miss your flight.’
Robbie checked the clock on the dash. 12.05. She felt her heart start to beat too fast again. She forced her breathing to slow. ‘Okay,’ she muttered. ‘Okay.’ She looked at Jack. His eyes were the smoky green of gum leaves. She passed Bullant to him. ‘Please don’t let anything happen to him.’
Jack smiled. ‘I won’t, I promise.’
Robbie nodded. ‘Thank you.’ She opened the door, the metal frame creaking as she leant over to pick up her bag.
‘I hope he’s okay,’ Jack said quickly. Robbie nodded again, not looking at him, tears finally coming. She wiped them away with the back of her hand and headed towards the sliding glass doors, against the small tide of people coming out and recoiling at the heat.
*
Nasim met Robbie at the airport, and in a taxi they went straight to the nursing home. The manager met them out the front, giving Nasim a defensive look as she led them in through reception. ‘The police have been,’ she said in a tight, nervous voice. She tugged at her sleeves. Her clothes were wrinkled. ‘We spent the whole night going over the surveillance footage to get a sense of what happened.’
Hearing this, Robbie snapped to attention. ‘I’d like to see it too.’
The manager shook her head. ‘No need. We identified when your father left his ward and the building. The police are looking for him.’
‘I’d still like to see it,’ Robbie said, a steeliness entering her voice.
The manager looked as though she was going to fight Robbie on it, then changed her mind. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I can set it up in here for you to watch.’ She looked pointedly at Nasim. ‘And you too?’
Robbie nodded. ‘Yes, my friend too.’
The manager showed the women to a desk, where they sat in front of three screens: one with footage from Danny’s ward, one from the corridor, the last from the entrance.
‘What the fuck?’ Robbie said when she saw her father sit up in bed and look around before unlatching the cot side. He swung his legs out and lowered himself onto the floor, stretching out his hand to his walking frame. He went to the drawers and took out a pair of pants, wobbling as he lassoed a leg on each foot, pulling them over his pyjamas. He tugged a woollen jumper over his nightshirt, slipped on his moccasins and made for the open doorway, pushing the walking frame in front. Robbie shook her head in astonishment. ‘You are fucking kidding me.’ She tapped on the second screen to play.
He was in the corridor now, shuffling at an achingly slow pace towards the exit. On the third screen, the sliding glass doors were shut, the car park empty. Robbie watched the timer tick over. At 22.05 PM, the glass doors opened, and Danny emerged. He looked around the car park cautiously. Swinging the frame out in front, he lunged towards the street. He went under the camera and the women could see the top of his head, a small bald patch in the centre, like a bird’s egg. He veered to the right. Then he was gone.
*
At the police station, Nasim waited outside. The officer at the desk asked Robbie to sit down, but she couldn’t, pacing instead. When Otis arrived, she burst into tears. They hugged. ‘You’re kidding me?’ Otis said when she told him about how Danny had walked himself out of there.
A policewoman came out to see them, ushering the siblings into a small room. ‘We’re taking it very seriously,’ the woman said kindly. ‘We’ve done numerous callouts, we’ve got every cop car on the road aware of it, foot patrol too. We’ll call you if anything comes up.’
‘Can you tell me where you’ve checked?’ Robbie asked.
The woman looked tired. ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t be exact. I can assure you we are looking – but to be clear, Ms O’Farrell, there are a lot of missing people out there. We’ll need you to do some of the heavy lifting. Put a call out to your networks, check his old haunts.’
Robbie and Otis rang around and posted on Facebook. They went to the familiar locations. Nasim offered to come, but the siblings preferred to be on their own. Something about going back to those places; they didn’t want to be observed. Plus, it was nice to be together, the two of them. In Otis’s car, they drove to the school where Danny had been caretaker, and to their old townhouse. They even drove to Half Moon Bay, cursing the lycra-clad cyclists taking up the road.
On the beach, they were the only ones there, and sank into the sand in dismay.
That night she stayed in Claire and Nathan’s flat, waiting for them to fly home. After Otis left, she lay on the couch, the television on, wondering where their father was right then, where he was sleeping. She barely registered when the news began. But then a camera zoomed in on Uluru and Robbie sat up quickly, grabbing the remote, stabbing at the buttons to increase the volume. There was a close-up of the coiled chain on the ground, then archival footage of school groups in the 1950s and 1960s doing the climb, students’ hands waving in that strange sped-up way of 8mm film. She started when Jack appeared in the frame. He looked wary, pausing before he spoke, considering the reporter’s question. ‘I think the community is pretty divided over this,’ he said. ‘I think people are scared.’ He was cut off, the camera switching to another shot of Uluru.
Robbie changed the channel frantically. Jack re
appeared on ABC News 24, unedited. ‘I think the community is pretty divided over this. I think people are scared. You probably know this,’ he said, looking directly at the reporter, ‘but when Bob Hawke gave the title back to the Anangu in 1985, at the last minute he put in a protection so that Australians still had a right to climb Uluru, so it wasn’t really a complete handback. Similarly,’ he added, ‘in 2007, the Howard government temporarily extinguished native title, obviously without the permission of the Anangu people.’ Jack squinted. ‘That was only seven years ago. So, I think many of the elders would have loved to kick that chain down, but I’m not sure they’re entirely convinced they’re out of chains yet themselves.’ The reporter seemed pleased with that.
All night, Robbie watched the news broadcasts, switching between stations and searching the internet. Jack appeared again and again. Robbie smiled. He spoke so evenly, she thought, that he seemed untouched by anger. She felt a tug in her chest, seeing his green eyes and tangled red hair.
At one point she gave a yell and quickly paused the player on her laptop, then dragged the status bar back, stopping on a single frame. She leaned in closer and started to laugh. Jay was behind the reporters and all the others milling around. He was walking across the frame, his middle finger defiantly up, her orange speaker in his other hand.
*
The next day, Claire and Nathan arrived. Her mother was pale and worried, but also determined. She hugged Robbie. She already had a handful of flyers she’d printed in transit.
At the nursing home, they set out from the corner where Robbie had seen him disappear in the CCTV footage, with Claire in the lead.
They walked beside the road that split into three lanes and over a footbridge, alongside a sprawling golf course, then splintering off into streets. At each turn, Claire paused and then, as if finding his scent, strode on. They passed houses and blocks of flats and vacant blocks until they came to a shopping strip. The traffic lights were confusing, and people were walking across the middle of the road in front of oncoming trams.