Journey to the Stone Country

by Alex Miller

  They drove along a mine access track over brigalow and lancewood ridges for an hour. When they came off the stony ridges onto the open boxwood savanna, white Brahman cattle lifted their heads to gaze at the trucks as they went by. Bo spotted a scrub turkey standing head high in the buffel grass. His hand going out, indicating, ‘Ole turkey over there.’ Annabelle looked where he pointed but did not see the bird. The sky was pale china blue and there was no wind. A hawk on station in a poisoned boxtree lifted as they went by.

  She offered to roll a cigarette for him. He thanked her and handed her his packet of Drum. When she’d finished she handed him the cigarette and he leaned on the wheel to light it.

  ‘Smokers smoke all the time,’ she said.

  ‘You ever smoke?’

  ‘Briefly, years ago. Elizabeth still smokes.’

  For another half hour Bo eased the Pajero through the stony scrubs, changing up a gear whenever they came onto the sweeps of open buffel grass savanna. The boxforest had been poisoned by the cattlemen. The dead forest stood mile upon mile, grey and still. The ranks of lifeless trees like mute sentinels to some past glory, or bleak signposts to an apocalypse yet to come. When they crossed a fresh bulldozer scrape along the drill line Bo pulled up and sat in the cabin looking on, examining the scar. Red and white painted wooden pegs had been driven into the ground. He said, ‘They’ve pegged the chainages.’

  ‘Are you thinking of using the pegs as markers?’

  ‘I’m not sure how far apart they are.’

  ‘Can we ask them?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  She thought he might call up David Orlando or Susan on the mobile but he spat out the sidewindow and drove on.

  A while later they came down off the ridges onto wide riverflats, beyond which the smoky foliage of tall gumtrees posting the course of a river against the blue sky.

  Annabelle said, ‘Is that the Isaac River?’

  ‘That’s her.’

  A green four-wheel drive, its duco iridescent in the winter sunlight like the carapace of some mythical beetle come to rest there, was parked by the side of a ripple-iron tank set back from the riverbank. A man was standing off from the shining vehicle. He waved, as if he feared they might not see him. He was wearing a white hardhat like the one Trace Gnapun was wearing. The plastic site ID on his shirt catching the sun as he waved.

  They drew up to him and stepped down from the Pajero. The mine man came forward to meet them, offering his hand to Bo, his manner respectful, welcoming, uncertain. ‘You found your way all right then?’ He took Bo’s hand. ‘Andrew Wills,’ he said. ‘You must be Bo Rennie. I’m the mine safety officer. The environmental officer’s on leave, so David Orlando sent me.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Bo said. ‘We found our way all right, Andrew.’ And there was a mordant note in the tone of this remark that made the mine man glance at Annabelle, checking perhaps with his own kind that he was not to be the butt of some clannish amusement. Annabelle stepped up and shook his hand. She smiled sweetly at him, the sun in her face, her wide grey hat and her bright hennaed hair and her modish sunglasses, through which the mine man could not see the expression in her eyes.

  ‘Bo mustered all this country years ago, Andrew,’ she explained.

  Bo looked at her.

  The mine man said helplessly, ‘Oh, I see. Years ago.’ He turned to Bo, eager to know, to be instructed even by Bo, to assure them he respected their reasons for being there, the things they knew of and of which he knew nothing. ‘This was a cattle station back then, I suppose?’

  Bo thumbed his hat back and stood considering the country. ‘There was none of this African buffel grass here in them days, Andrew. They hadn’t poisoned this boxforest then. Just a few trees ringbarked and sawed for posts here and there, but mostly she was a living forest.’ His openhanded gesture took in the entire compass of the horizon, the known world, all that was between humankind and heaven. ‘The old people used to say there was sheep here at one time. But this was only ever cattle country as I knew it. That’s all it ever was. Shorthorns and Herefords in them days. The British breeds.’ He looked at the mine man as if he might be attempting to gauge the degree of his ignorance about this country and cattle.

  Annabelle asked Bo, ‘This was all part of Picardy Station then, wasn’t it?’ She had been studying the map and had a pretty good idea where she was. She said to the mine man, ‘Picardy featured in the tragic history of this part of the country.’

  Bo’s indicating hand came out again, his mobile fingers describing a line in the air that penetrated the tall gumtrees then crossed the Isaac River and went on north some way, taking a dip to the south and swinging eventually in a wide rounded arc behind them. His gaze following inwardly the country he traversed in his mind, seeking the scattered herds of red and blue cattle that had once camped among the lancewood and the brigalow, feeding contentedly among the leafy boxwoods then and starting up at the approach of his and Dougald Gnapun’s horses. ‘Part of Picardy this way.’ Turning to show them, and they turned with him, looking, as if they would see what he saw in his memory. ‘Wotonga and Morambah over here.’ His hand steadying and a pause, waiting for something to settle in his mind. ‘Them ridges is all good winter country.’

  The mine man looked around at the encompassing timber, the low thickets of anonymous shrubs, gazing intently for a moment at the wiregrass as if he would read its hieroglyphs, bleached to a soft and silvery hue like delicate pencillings on the liverish soil, and he frowned as if he had not looked at this country before; as if he thought it might yet yield a precious mystery to him. He turned back to Bo. ‘What do you think you’ll find here, Bo?’ He looked at Annabelle. ‘I know you people have your methods.’

  Bo toed the dust with his boot and plucked a strand of loose tobacco from his tongue. He looked up, narrowing his eyes as if he searched for a presence more elusive than the British breeds he’d hunted once. ‘Well, you never know what you will find out here once you start looking, Andrew.’ He waved his hand—that encompassing gesture, taking in the whole of heaven and hell and the world of men and of cattle; and of other things that would not be spoken of today, and perhaps would never be spoken of again but would become, after he was gone, the sediment of lost histories.

  The mine man said uncertainly, ‘Our people have been over every inch of this country. We didn’t find anything.’

  ‘You fellers don’t see it. Because you’re not looking for it.’ Bo spoke gently to the mine man, his smile easing the blunt passage of his words. ‘But there’s stuff here all right. And we shall find it.’

  ‘Well good luck,’ the mine man said. He looked into Bo’s eyes as if he desired between them a strong meeting of men; a meeting he could reflect upon after he had left them and from which he might draw a reassurance of the substance of this encounter. ‘I’m sure you will.’ He was puzzled however. ‘If there’s anything you need, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask.’ He could not imagine what they might need. He looked at Annabelle and back to Bo again, wanting them to understand his willingness to assist them. ‘Anything at all. You understand?’ He waited, his hands on his hips.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Bo said; light, cheerful, content with the morning, from which the frost had gone, desiring nothing from the mine man. He took his packet of Drum from his shirt pocket and began to make another cigarette. He stuck the paper to his lower lip and worked the tobacco between his palms. ‘If we think of anything, we’ll let you know, Andrew.’

  Annabelle reached in to the back seat of the Pajero and fetched out the map she had been studying earlier. She spread it on the bonnet. The mine man leaned and placed his finger confidently on the word TANK. ‘We’re here.’ He looked up and pointed. ‘The mine’s through there.’ He looked down at the map again. ‘And that’s the Isaac.’

  ‘Through there,’ Bo corrected him, gesturing as if he advised a driver to adjust his steering lock a degree or two. ‘The mine’s through there, Andrew.’

  The
mine man laughed and looked at Annabelle. ‘Well roughly,’ he said. ‘It’s roughly through there.’ It seemed he did not take kindly to being corrected by a mere degree or two.

  ‘Not roughly. Roughly’s no good to you out here. You’ll get yourself lost in these scrubs following roughly. The mine’s through there!’ Bo said firmly, squinting along his adjusting fingers, his hand steady, advising precision. ‘She’s right there.’

  Annabelle rolled the map and put it on the back seat and she closed the door of the Pajero.

  There was a silence.

  Bo said, ‘If you have a plan of the pegged chainages, it would be useful for Susan Bassett to have a copy for her report. I know that.’

  ‘I’ll have one brought out to you by lunchtime,’ Andrew Wills said.

  ‘This evening will be fine, Andrew. You can leave it for us at the accommodation centre.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘It would be no trouble to get it out here to you.’

  ‘We’re not gonna need it today.’

  The mine man looked about, as if he could envisage no possibility of action among the wiregrass and shrubby bitter barks that surrounded them. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for.’ He hesitated. ‘I guess David told you there’s no fires permitted out here?’ He looked around. ‘We’ve got charges set,’ he explained. ‘For the seismic mapping. You’ll see little red and blue wires hanging out of the holes. It’s a good idea to keep clear of them.’

  Bo sniffed and spat.

  The mine man laughed. ‘You should really be wearing your hardhats and IDs, you know.’

  They watched him drive away. When he was gone and there was only the dying murmur of the motor, Bo said, ‘Mr Roughly.’ He looked at Annabelle. ‘We’ll have a drink of tea.’

  Soon the fragrant smoke of a sandalwood fire sweetly perfumed the morning air. Bo crouched and set the billy to boil among the flaming sticks. When he was done he turned and looked up the hill towards the white truck. He waved and pointed at the billy on the fire, making drinking motions. The girl’s hand waved a bottle of Coca-Cola out of the truck window then withdrew.

  Bo sat on the sprung branch of a toppled lancewood. He ate a thick square of banana cake from his crib and stared into the fire. Between bites of cake, he sipped the scalding black tea, sucking it from the lip of the tin mug. Annabelle squatted on the other side of the fire, poking at the burning sticks. There was a stillness in the bush, a peacefulness between them, that she was reluctant to disturb with her questions, so she held back. The fragrant smoke of their fire hanging like a mist of incense across the flat, layered among the pendulous foliage of the bitter barks in imitation of a Chinese scroll painting.

  Bo looked up at her. ‘Safety officer,’ he said. ‘What is he then, do you think? An engineer?’

  Annabelle ceased poking the fire. ‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘They want to help. They want to do the right thing.’

  ‘That’s my impression.’

  There was the slam of the truck door back up the track. They both turned and looked. They watched the girl walk around the truck and go in among the grey trunks of the poisoned boxtrees. There was warmth in the sun now. They sat drinking their tea and eating the cakes they had packed with their lunch crib in the mess hall after breakfast.

  Bo said, ‘Did your old dad ever bring home them scrub turkeys for you?’

  ‘To eat, you mean?’

  ‘They’re good roasted.’

  ‘I don’t remember. I don’t think so. I was young when I left. I missed growing up there.’

  ‘Your old dad always called in to Verbena for a drink of tea on his way into town. Never missed.’

  Annabelle looked at him. ‘I don’t remember ever calling in with him when I was home on holiday,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember ever seeing your grandmother.’

  ‘A grey-haired old lady in a flowered dress. She ruled us. If one of us kids ever asked her where she was taking us when she took us into the bush, she’d give us a clout over the ear. And a good one too. It set you back a step.’ Bo fell silent. After a while he said, ‘Your old dad was very protective with you girls. I don’t think you was ever allowed to go anywhere, except to boarding school.’ He looked across the fire at Annabelle and grinned.

  She stared into the coals. ‘I never went to a dance in Mount Coolon.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. Nor to the picture show neither. I’d remember seeing you there if you had.’

  ‘Later on I was too shy to go.’

  ‘That boarding school made you shy, I reckon. But not Elizabeth. Elizabeth was never too shy for the picture show.’

  ‘Elizabeth and me were always different.’

  ‘When Elizabeth come home from that school she never missed a dance. I remember her that first evening after she finished school coming into the hall there in Mount Coolon. She looked us fellers over as if we was a yard of steers. She shamed us all before she decided which one of us she was going to dance with.’ Bo cleared his throat and spat aside. ‘And she picked the wrong one then.’

  They were silent.

  Bo said, ‘He was a good old feller, your dad. My father mustered for him many times.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No. I never did work for your dad.’

  ‘What was the reason for that?’

  ‘I don’t think there was a particular reason for it. It was just the way it come out. Once he give away yard building and travelling around the country fencing and all that, my old feller didn’t need me at Verbena. He managed the cattle work for Grandma on his own after that. Me and Dougald was working over here and down in that Broken River country by the time we was seventeen.’ His free hand waving at the country as if they might expect their fathers to ride by. ‘They was never friends, but our two old fellers got along all right. Neither one of them liked to see anyone have a day off. They was agreed about that. All they ever knew was work.’ He leaned and reached for the billy and refilled his mug with the stewed tea. ‘They were good old fellers.’ He paused. ‘And I think they knew it.’

  Annabelle watched him.

  The morning was slipping away. He seemed to be in no hurry to begin work. She wondered if he was waiting for something. She stood up and stepped across to the open door of the Pajero. She rinsed her cup and dried it on a tea towel. She put the cup away in the plastic grocery crate and stood folding the towel, looking back at Bo, impatient now to get going. ‘Where do you think we’ll start looking for artefacts?’

  He cradled his mug in one hand, drawing on his cigarette and squinting into the fire. He sucked his teeth and looked around, considering. ‘Oo, well . . . I suppose we can go on up along the bank of that gully there. She swings around over here.’ He twisted around on the limb, his left hand reaching out, his aligned fingers steadying for the precise heading of the creekbed. ‘Comes into the Isaac a mile farther up.’ He laughed softly. ‘Roughly,’ he said, testing the novel status of the word.

  ‘Will Arner and Trace come with us?’

  ‘She might. I don’t think he’ll get out of the truck.’ Bo reached and stirred the dying embers of sandalwood with a stick.

  Annabelle stood watching him.

  He sucked the phlegm from his nose and spat hard into the embers.

  Annabelle turned away. She went to the Pajero and buckled the hand-held GPS receiver in its softcase onto her belt and fetched the clipboard from the front seat. She looked across at Bo. He sat unmoved on the sprung branch of the toppled sandalwood. There was a light crack and the end of a dead branch fell from a nearby tree. A black crow rose with a cry and swept over their camp, its wings hissing in the still air, its white eye observing them. The branch hit the ground with a light tap.

  Bo cleared his throat and firmed his hat. He stood up and set his mug carefully on the toppled log. He turned and started up the track towards the white truck. Annabelle watched his retreating figure. He was whistling the tune of ‘You’re Gonna Be Sorry’
that the man in the mess hall had been singing the night before.

  When he came back she asked him, ‘Are they coming?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You said they’re down in the contract as field officers?’

  ‘They’re here, aren’t they?’ He went over and kicked loose earth onto the smoking remains of the fire.

  She slung the strap of the camera case over her shoulder and went and stood with him. He looked up from the smoking ashes, his gaze taking in the camera, the GPS on her belt, the mobile phone clipped to the breast pocket of her overalls and the clipboard in her hands. ‘You got everything there, Miss Annabellebeck?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you, Mr Bo Rennie?’

  He looked into her eyes. ‘What if our old dads rode by now and seen us?’

  ‘They’d get a surprise,’ she said.

  She followed in his track a step or two behind, skirting the shrubby bitter barks and making for the bank of the Isaac. The day was beginning to heat up.

  ‘She feeds him all that rubbish,’ Bo said over his shoulder, speaking his thoughts aloud as if he had been talking with her of this matter, as if indeed she were intimate to his concerns, his tone resentful, puzzled and irritated. ‘Bloody Milky Bars and Coca-Cola. Can’t he feed himself?’ He fell silent. ‘They’ve got that mission attitude. Where’d they get that from? They didn’t get that from their dad. Till he got sick, Dougald only ever had two days off in his life. He could work, that feller. What’s the idea of sitting in that truck all day? What’s that gonna do for them?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just the way all kids are these days,’ she suggested. ‘Not just them.’

  ‘They’re not kids.’