Journey to the Stone Country

by Alex Miller

  ‘Well, we’ll take it,’ Susan said, but there was a doubt in her voice. She took out her penknife and eased the stone out of its gravel embedment. It came away easily. She brushed the clay from it and turned it in her hand. It was a smooth cylinder, about twenty centimetres long, tapering to a point at one end, a deep circle incised around the tapering head. ‘Limestone,’ she said. ‘Are there any limestone deposits in this area?’ When Bo did not answer she looked around for him. He had walked away some distance and was squatting in the bed of the gully turning over rocks. She handed the stone to Annabelle. ‘Bo’s got the wind up. They don’t like finding this kind of thing.’ She laughed. ‘No one knows what these were used for. The meaning’s been lost. Whatever it was.’

  Annabelle said, ‘Maybe we should leave it here then.’

  ‘Keep it,’ Susan said. ‘A memento of your flight to Burranbah.’ She laughed thinly. ‘Put it on the mantelpiece when you get back to Melbourne.’ She turned away. ‘We’re not going to get this survey finished if we don’t keep moving.’

  Annabelle watched her walk back along the gully until she caught up with Bo. Bo stood up and he and Susan walked along together until they came to the place where they’d scrambled down the bank. Bo stood aside to let Susan go up ahead of him. He looked back towards Annabelle. She looked at the stone in her hands. She felt the weight of it, not in her hands but in her chest, the archaic mystery of its lost purpose a constriction around her heart.

  She carried the stone with her all that day and neither Susan nor Bo offered to relieve her of it. That evening when she pressed Susan for more information, Susan said even the old Murris didn’t know what such stones had been used for. ‘They’re like words from a dead language. We’ve got no way of cracking their secrets now.’

  After the meal in the mess hall the last evening Susan set up her laptop in her room and began drafting the preliminary report from the data they had entered on the summary sheets.

  Annabelle came in and stood by her, looking over her shoulder and reading what she had written: Of the 68 sites recorded, stone artefact scatters manufactured from a range of raw materials were the most common. Together with isolated finds of artefacts they constituted just over 85% of the total. Their most common location was along the banks of the Isaac River and associated eroding gullies. The range of materials included quartzite, silcrete, chert, petrified wood, sandstone, basalt, mudstone, siltstone and ashtone, crystalline and milky quartz, as well as other volcanic and sedimentary materials. Other site type occurrences were less frequent. No occurrence of stone arrangements was recorded.

  Annabelle said, ‘Are you going to describe the cylindrical stone?’

  Susan took off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger and put her glasses on again. The reverse-cycle airconditioner in the wall above her head trembled on its mounts, blowing a thin stream of warm air over them, riffling the flowered curtains at either side of the narrow window. She sat staring out at the parked vehicles glistening with frost under the arc lights of the compound. ‘Go and get some sleep,’ she said. ‘I do these things on automatic.’ She turned and looked up at Annabelle, ‘We can describe your stone in the full report. This is just something to keep Dougald Gnapun and his mates happy. It might keep them off my back for a week or two.’ She turned back to the laptop, the keys going tickety-tack under her reddened fingers. She paused. ‘Steven called me,’ she said. She looked up at Annabelle. ‘He said he’d spoken to you.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I said his call was the first I’d heard from either of you for three years.’ Susan resumed keying in the data.

  ‘Thanks.’ Annabelle hesitated. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t tell you he’d called.’

  ‘It’s okay. I don’t want to know the details. Just let me know when you’ve made a decision.’

  When she came out of Susan’s room Annabelle saw Bo standing at the end of the demountable smoking a cigarette. She walked down and joined him. He turned to her and said good evening.

  She said. ‘I love the smell of cigarettes in the bush on frosty nights. It reminds me of when I used to smoke.’ She waited but he said nothing. ‘My dad was the opposite to your Grandma. He was always urging me and Elizabeth to ask questions. He longed to give us the answers to everything.’

  After a time Bo asked, ‘You hear from your husband again?’

  ‘He rang and left messages.’ She was silent a moment. ‘I deleted them.’

  He looked at her. ‘You think he might come after you?’

  ‘He might, I suppose.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You got a plan?’

  ‘No.’ She turned to him. ‘Your Grandma wouldn’t have approved of all these questions.’

  ‘I believe she would have understood,’ he said soberly. He stood thinking. ‘I seen your old grandad plenty of times. An old man in a narrow-brimmed hat. He was never without a coat. Always black. And a waistcoat, even on the hottest days of summer. He’d ride over with your dad when your people was buying our steers. While your dad was having a drink of tea in the house and doing business with Grandma, the old man would sit his horse out there in the shade of a yellowbox that grew just outside the garden fence. Never said a hello. He threw down a few pennies for us kids there one day. Grandma come out of the house and shouted to us not to touch them. He laughed at her. She never would let us look for them pennies and I guess they’re still laying there to this day.’ He stood thinking. ‘He was one of them real old-timers, your granddad. Us kids was frightened of him.’

  ‘Was your grandmother frightened of him?’

  ‘If she was she wouldn’t have showed it.’

  They said no more. The sound of a movie on a teevee from one of the rooms along the passage. A mopoke calling in the scrubs. A vehicle door slamming and a motor starting up. Standing alone in the evening air with him, Annabelle felt no awkwardness in the silence that settled between them. It was as if they knew they had the rest of their lives to say whatever they might wish to say to each other. She realised she had never felt quite so at ease in the company of a man. When he said he’d known she would come back one day, had he meant, she wondered, that he had hoped she would come back? ‘I wouldn’t mind going back to the Suttor, one of these days. Just to have a look.’ It was not what she meant, but it would have to do for now. The reality was too complicated. There was too deep an ambivalence in her attitude to the country of her childhood to make anything she might ever say about it wholly the truth. She waited but Bo did not respond. ‘Have your people still got Verbena Station?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘We lost the old place.’

  On the Road

  WITH BO BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE PAJERO AND ARNER AND Trace following a hundred metres back in the white truck they left the mine compound at ten the next morning and turned northeast off the narrow stretch of tar onto the Peak Downs Highway. Susan had been up half the night finishing the report and was curled up on the back seat, a blanket from Bo’s swag covering her.

  They drove through Coppabella without slowing, overhauling an eastbound coaltrain at Tootoolah. They crossed the open grasslands of Oxford Downs where thousands of white Brahman cattle grazed on the African grass, then swung north towards Nebo and the ranges. Bo saluted only two vehicles going by them the other way in all this time. After leaving Nebo they climbed into the forested Pisgah and Connors Ranges, crossing Denison Creek in view of Mount Spencer, the cold waters of Lake Epsom on their right. On the eastern slope of the ranges the road wound its way down through darkly forested country towards the coast. At Spencer Gap Bo raised his hand, pointing out Annabelle’s sidewindow. Thirty kilometres distant over to the east, plumes of white smoke rising straight into the still air from the cane mills around Sarina, the kingfisher blue of the Coral Sea stretching out beyond, merging eventually with the cloudless sky.

  They skirted the to
wn centre of Mackay on the bypass road and crossed the Pioneer River, going the back way into Maryvale.

  Bo pulled the Pajero off the road and parked on a patch of scuffed kikuyu grass in front of a small weatherboard house. He turned off the ignition and the hot motor ran on then died. Arner pulled in and parked alongside the Pajero.

  It was a little after noon.

  The day was windless and warm.

  A tall man came from inside the house. He stood in the deep shadow of the open doorway, holding the flywire back with one hand and watching them get out and stretch their limbs in the sun. The tall man didn’t greet them. He was slow of movement, heavy in the body and downcast in his expression, as if he was reluctant to be drawn from his dark house into the bright day. The dwelling stood on a narrow strip of land between the tarmac and a steep decline to the flat green of the canefields, the forested escarpment of the Highlands a distant backdrop. The glossy foliage of a mango tree shading the verandah, one of its thick branches chainsawed to make way for the satellite dish on the tin roof. A refrigerator and an exercise bike alongside each other on the verandah by the door. An old lemon tree off to one side, its branches bowed with the weight of big yellow lemons. Fallen fruit littering the ground. No neighbouring house but a vacant block scraped by a dozerblade, green shoots of lantana and scotch thistle poking up through the scrape. A tilted FOR SALE board fronting the road.

  Bo stood by the back door of the Pajero rolling a smoke, his hat tipped back, strands of hair plastered to his forehead above the reddened indentation of his hatband. Susan was sitting up in the back untangling herself from the blanket.

  ‘You made good time,’ the man said from the doorway. He stood watching Susan climb out of the Pajero, as if he intended asking her a question, but he said nothing and turned and went back inside the house. An orange Ford 500 drove by along the road, the bass thumping, young people waving and yelling from the windows. Trace reached her white hardhat out the cabin of the truck and held it aloft, as if it were a trophy from the wilderness.

  Bo lit his smoke.

  Trace jumped down from the truck and went inside the house. Arner eased himself out from behind the wheel and followed her, stepping deliberately across the kikuyu patch.

  Bo watched him. ‘You gonna take your gear in?’

  Arner took hold of the verandah post, paused, then hauled himself up the two steps onto the boards. He stood breathing. ‘I’ll get it later.’ His voice was husky and low, as if he confided some shy knowledge of himself that he was unwilling to speak of openly to others. He stepped across the verandah and pulled open the flywire door. He ducked his head and went into the house.

  Bo turned to Susan as she came around the back of the Pajero. ‘We should take in them maps for Dougald to have a look at?’

  ‘I’ll get them.’

  He waited for her, Annabelle standing beside him. The two women followed him up the steps and into the house.

  The tall man was sitting at a darkstained pine table on the far side of the room by the kitchen area, his elbows on the wood, his arms resting along the tabletop. He was gazing solemnly at the palms of his hands, which were large and pale and soft looking, with lines like ingrained coal stains traversing the pallor. The skin of his face was puffy and grey, the flesh hanging in slack folds from the square block of his skull.

  The tabletop was covered with newspapers and magazines, sauce bottles and a teapot, a plastic packet of sugar, breakfast cereal and dirtied bowls and plates, cutlery lying about. Arner was sitting in a big old green club lounge, his back to the table. He was pointing the remote and thumbing through the channels on a teevee against the wall. Trophies on the teevee, the sound off. A dozen more trophies spread around the room on tables and shelves. Hung on the wall between the windows, an arrangement of plaques and photographs. Trace with a pool cue in one hand and a trophy in the other at the centre of each photo, a wide grin on her face. Smiling young people gathered around her holding up beer glasses.

  Susan went over and sat opposite the man at the table. She laid the rolled mine maps and her report in front of him. ‘How are you, Dougald?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty good Sue.’

  She looked up. ‘This is Annabelle Küen. She’s been helping us. Annabelle, meet Dougald Gnapun.’

  He didn’t get up or offer his hand but turned and nodded to her.

  Bo said, ‘William Beck’s youngest daughter.’

  Dougald Gnapun paused then and gave her a searching look. ‘So you come back up this way?’ he said. He turned back to Susan without waiting for a response from Annabelle. ‘You get it done?’

  ‘There’s a section the other side of the Isaac left to do. It’ll take us a couple of days. We’ll go back and finish it off after I’ve been out to Charters Towers. I can’t leave that job any longer. And I’ve got to spend a few days catching up in the office.’

  Dougald said evenly, ‘Les Marra was here.’

  Susan waited, ‘And?’ She looked at Annabelle. ‘Mr bloody trouble.’

  Dougald examined his open palms. ‘Yeah,’ he said, delivering his information in a flat tone, ‘Him and Steve was at a meeting in Brisbane.’

  ‘What’s going on, Dougald? Just tell me the bad news,’ Susan said.

  He looked at her and shrugged, his manner apologetic. ‘They’ve signed the agreement with the government and that company. They’re going ahead with a dam on Ranna Creek.’

  ‘And I suppose he expects me to drop everything and survey Ranna?’

  Dougald said, ‘It’ll have to be done before the summer. She’s not a good place to get into after rain.’

  ‘Well I can’t do it,’ Susan said. ‘He’s asking the impossible.’ She said accusingly, ‘You’ve known about this for ages, haven’t you?’

  ‘Well, I think everyone’s known for years that the government’s been planning a dam on the Ranna,’ Dougald said.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ Susan looked at Bo. ‘Say something Bo.’

  Bo said evenly, ‘Les Marra’s a smart feller. He’s doin it for the young people. But I never seen no good come of the way him and Steve operates.’ He turned away and stepped into the kitchen area and opened the refrigerator. ‘We’d better have a feed, old mate, before we all die of hunger.’

  Dougald gazed across the table at Susan. ‘I’ve got no food here,’ he said.

  Bo made an annoyed clucking sound and shut the refrigerator door. ‘I’ll go down the shop and get something. You all want fish and chips?’

  Annabelle said, ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Dougald looked at them. ‘You fellers camping here tonight?’

  Bo shook his head. ‘We’ll get going. Susan’s gotta be back in Townsville.’

  Bo and Dougald looked at each other. Neither spoke.

  After some little while Dougald said, ‘Plenty of feed out there in that Isaac River country I’ll bet?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  The two men evidently found something of themselves in what they saw in the other. Their years together on the Isaac harboured within them.

  Bo said, ‘That boxforest country’s all been poisoned.’

  Dougald looked down at his hands. He touched Susan’s report as if he proposed examining it. ‘That was all sweet winter country through there. Them dead trees would let in the frosts and dry it up.’

  ‘She’s all African buffel grass and Brahmans. There’s not a blade of native pick left, except on the ridges.’

  Dougald narrowed his eyes, considering the planes of his palms as if he considered the fine cattle country of his youth. ‘On Picardy too?’

  ‘Oh yes, Picardy, all that downs country been poisoned,’ Bo said.

  There was a silence.

  Bo said, ‘Me and Annabelle’ll go and get us something to eat.’

  No one moved.

  The sound came up on the teevee. They turned and looked. It was a rugby game. Arner switched channels. They looked away.

  ‘It would have been easier finding them scar
red trees of the old people with the timber dead,’ Dougald said and laughed softly. It was a mirthless laugh, however, a listless resignation in his voice, almost self-mocking, as if he wished them to understand it was the least of his duties to inquire after the progress of the mine survey. ‘Find many scarred trees?’

  ‘No,’ Bo said. ‘We didn’t find much of anything. Just campsites.’

  Annabelle said, ‘I found an interesting stone.’

  They all turned and looked at her.

  She said, ‘I’ll get it.’ She went out to the Pajero and opened the back door. The stone was in the grocery bin. She had wrapped it in a tea towel. As she lifted the heavy stone cylinder from the bin it came to her that she would leave it with Dougald Gnapun and be rid of it.

  Inside the house the three of them waited for her. Something uncomfortable in their apprehension of her return. While they waited they watched the teevee. A car blew its horn out in the road. Trace came out of her room and ran out of the house. There was the sound of a door slamming and the car driving off, the bass thumping.

  Susan said, ‘You got down to Brisbane all right yourself then, Dougald?’

  ‘Yeah. I come back yesterday.’

  ‘What did the doctors say?’

  Dougald straightened, pressing his hand to his left side above the waistband of his trousers. ‘They’re doing some tests.’ He looked down at his large hand, covering his side like a wound-dressing. ‘I’ve got this monitor thing taped to me.’ He tugged his shirt aside to let them see.

  They both looked at the black box taped to his yellow skin with a silvery membrane.

  Bo said, ‘We’ll be able to keep track of you now, old mate, with that GPS thing of Susan’s.’

  They laughed.

  Annabelle came in through the flywire and they turned and watched her approach.

  She came up to the table and with both hands she laid the stone on the crumpled newspapers in front of Dougald, a sense of ceremony in her action, as if the stone were her offering to him, the price, perhaps, of her admittance to his trust.