Journey to the Stone Country

by Alex Miller

  Bo said, ‘Let me know when you want a spell.’

  ‘We’ll stop for a coffee in Bowen.’

  ‘And steak,’ he said.

  Bo slipped a tape into the player and Merle Haggard sang his melancholy songs. The stream of oncoming traffic going by, the Pajero’s headlights diving into thick yellow smoke drifting across the highway from the cane fires, the trembling glow of approaching vehicles like lost men searching with lanterns in a fog.

  The broken shoulder of the bitumen rattled the Pajero’s shockers.

  Bo advised tightly, ‘Ease her back, Sue.’

  Susan kept her foot down.

  They swept out of the smoke into the clear. Venus hanging in the sky ahead of them. ‘You okay in the back there?’ Susan called.

  ‘Yeah, I’m good back here.’ Annabelle heard herself easing into the local vernacular. Merle Haggard sang, I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend, then today I started loving you again . . .

  Two hours later Susan pulled the Pajero off the road onto the floodlit apron of the servo at the end of the Bowen bypass. She parked alongside the only diesel pump. A truck driver filling the tanks of his prime mover. Bo got out and walked over to the men’s toilet. Annabelle stood beside Susan watching the truck driver. There were four big stainless steel tanks slung along the chassis rails of his rig. He looked up at them. ‘How’s it goin there?’

  ‘Good. How are you?’ Susan said.

  ‘Yeah, pretty good.’

  Together they watched the pump gauge.

  ‘How much will she take?’ Susan asked.

  He looked up. ‘You fellers in a hurry?’

  ‘No, we’ll be stopping for a coffee. I was just wondering how much those tanks of yours would take all together.’

  The truck driver considered the array of shining fuel tanks then turned back to the pump gauge. ‘She’s just about there. She’s taken over eleven hundred litres.’

  ‘How far will that get you?’

  ‘This’ll take me all the way to Melbourne.’ He removed the nozzle. ‘You want to wait till I’ve paid?’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  The truck driver hung the nozzle in its cradle and walked away across the concrete. They watched him standing at the counter inside the shop paying with his card. He gave the all-clear and Susan lifted the nozzle and started filling the Pajero.

  Annabelle leaned against the back of the Pajero and checked her mobile. There were three messages. Two from Steven. She deleted them. The third was from her sister. She listened to Elizabeth telling her she’d be in Melbourne all day Friday on her way home from Rome.

  Susan said, ‘You hear anything from Steven?’

  ‘I didn’t listen to his messages. Elizabeth will be in Melbourne Friday.’

  ‘You’ll let her know not to go to Carlton?’

  ‘Probably. Though I don’t see what harm she can do if she runs into him.’

  The truck driver came back and climbed into his cabin. He started the motor and leaned his elbow on the door and looked down at the two women. ‘Where you fellers headed tonight?’

  ‘Townsville,’ Susan said.

  He put the rig in gear and eased away from the pump. ‘You have a good trip.’

  ‘You too,’ they called back and stood watching him pull out onto the highway. The black road, the moon made orange by the smoke of the cane fires, on the western horizon the dark shapes of the Leichhardt Ranges against the sky. Susan stood with the nozzle in the mouth of the Pajero’s fuel tank, looking back to the west and the high ranges. ‘You made up your mind yet what you’re going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Annabelle said. ‘I’m sorry, but I find it hard to talk about at the moment. If I hadn’t had you to go to, I don’t know what I would have done.’

  There was a silence. Then Susan said, ‘Yeah. Well it’s been good having you along.’ She looked at Annabelle and smiled, ‘There’s going to be an empty space around here for me when you go back.’

  ‘Thanks. Same here.’

  Susan hung up the nozzle and screwed the fuel cap on. ‘God, I don’t know how many times I’ve been up and down this road in the past few years.’

  They parked the Pajero beside the shop and went in and paid. Bo was standing at the food counter talking to the waitress.

  They ordered and sat across from each other at a table by the wall. Facing them was a Coca-Cola sign. Bo sat reading the sign. ‘If we buy a slab of Coke,’ he said, ‘we could win enough flybys for a two-week holiday in Venice.’

  Susan said, ‘I’d give anything to see Venice again.’

  The tables had darkstained legs and red plastic covers with frilled edges stapled on. There was a red paper rose in a clear plastic tube on each table. The waitress came and stood, a mug in one hand and two in the other. She looked at Bo, ‘Yours the tea?’ He said it was and she handed him the mug and set the other mugs beside Annabelle and Susan. Annabelle thanked her and the waitress said tonelessly, ‘Not a problem.’ She came back with Bo’s steak and eggs with vegetables and salad, and a bowl of chips each for Annabelle and Susan. Annabelle shook salt onto her chips and eased out a napkin from the holder.

  Bo cut a portion of steak and speared it on his fork. He sat eating his steak and eggs, applying himself to the meal. Travellers came in and paid for their fuel and searched the shelves of the convenience area for this or that and called a goodnight and went out again. At the next table two men were eating hamburgers and chips and drinking Coca-Cola. The older man leaned over the table, his hamburger held to his mouth with both hands, as if he was afraid someone might snatch it from him. There were cobweb designs tattooed on his elbows, his thin grey hair tied back in a queue and hanging limply down his back. The younger man kept glancing at him nervously, as if there was a decision to be made.

  A teevee loud above their heads.

  When Bo had done he pushed his plate away. The salad and vegetables were untouched, the white rim of the plate smeared with the yellow yolk of the eggs and the dark blood of the steak. He observed mildly, ‘They never give you gravy in these places.’ He took his tobacco from his shirt pocket and rolled a cigarette. He nipped loose strands of tobacco from the ends of the cigarette and lit it, drawing the smoke and blowing it towards the ceiling. ‘You gonna do the Ranna survey, Sue?’

  Susan said, ‘I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in here. No I’m not.’

  ‘It’ll have to be done.’

  ‘Dougald thinks I’m going to give in to Les Marra’s blackmail, but I’m not. Even if I wanted to do it, I haven’t got the time. If I went down there now the business would suffer.’ She turned to Annabelle, ‘The Land Council bought back this incredibly beautiful station for them. It’s enormous. A quarter of a million acres. Now these elders, Les Marra and Steve Punaru, they’re mates of Dougald’s, they’ve signed an agreement for the valley to be dammed. They say the sale of the water to Bowen and Mackay will provide an economic base for the next generation. But it won’t. It’ll just become another source of handouts.’ She said disgustedly, ‘You give them back their Eden and they drown it.’ She turned around and waved at the waitress. ‘The government’s been planning a dam out there for years. It’s just been a matter of time till Bowen needed the water. They’ve got dams planned along the good creeks all through that highland country. But if elders like Les and Steve and Dougald refused to sign up, they wouldn’t be able to go ahead. Dougald’s in it up to here.’

  Bo said evenly, ‘It’s no good you getting upset with Dougald. He’s only doing what he thinks is for the best.’

  ‘I bet he’s known about this for ages.’ Susan ate the last of the chips and wiped her mouth on a napkin.

  Bo was watching the two men at the next table. Sensing Bo’s attention the older one looked across at him and Bo nodded to him and said, ‘Yeah, how are you mate?’ The man nodded back and murmured a greeting and looked away.

  Susan said, ‘Now they’ve got the elders on side the only way to sto
p the dam would be if a cultural survey were to find a site down there that got the attention of the Council on Monuments and Sites. Something of national importance.’

  Bo said to Annabelle, ‘That Les is a pretty smart feller. But Steve Punaru’s just a hanger-on. Steve never done a tap of honest work in his entire lifetime as far as I know. He’s just sat and waited for it to come to him. He’s got that old mission attitude, you know?’

  The two men at the next table scraped back their chairs and stood up. Bo turned and watched them. The older man bought a slab of Coca-Cola at the counter and carried it out ahead of the younger man.

  ‘See that?’ Bo said. ‘I knew they was up to something. Them two are planning to win that trip to Venice.’

  The waitress came over and began clearing the men’s table. Bo asked her, ‘Can I get another cup of tea over here? And these two ladies are after a coffee.’

  Susan said to Annabelle, ‘It would take months to survey a place like Ranna properly.’

  Bo watched her, squinting through the smoke of his cigarette. ‘We could maybe do a preliminary survey. We might come up with enough to hold them off for a while. Spend a week down there, like we just did at Burranbah.’

  Susan looked at him for a while without saying anything, considering. And he looked back at her, waiting for her to say what she was thinking of. ‘How long since you were down there?’ she asked him.

  ‘It’s more than twenty years since me and Dougald cleaned that place out for old Nellie Bigges.’

  ‘You’ve never been back?’

  ‘No. I don’t think anyone’s been down to the old Ranna Station since Nellie cleared out.’

  Susan turned to Annabelle, ‘Bo’s grandmother grew up on Ranna with the Bigges family. Bo and Dougald did the last muster on the place when George Bigges’ widow moved to the coast.’ She looked at Bo. ‘There’s a lot of history down there for you, Bo.’

  The waitress came and set fresh drinks in front of them. Bo thanked her and she said, ‘Not a problem.’ When she’d gone, Annabelle said, ‘My grandfather knew George Bigges. I believe they were friends.’

  Susan said, ‘Why don’t you two do it?’

  They looked at Annabelle to see what she’d say.

  Susan said, ‘Give your dean a ring and tell him you’re doing important casework up here. You’ll never see a more beautiful place than the Ranna Valley so they tell me. I’ve never been there.’ She looked at Bo. ‘What about Arner and Trace? They’re not really interested, are they?’

  ‘They’ll get interested.’

  ‘They may not.’

  ‘Well they’ll get less interested if I leave them behind. Dougald don’t want to sit there staring at them two all day.’

  ‘It’s all very well for Dougald,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t actually have to do anything. He just sits down there brooding in that silence of his, then suddenly comes out with something like this that throws off everyone else’s plans.’

  ‘It’s been tough on them three since Moa died,’ Bo said. ‘Tougher on Arner, I believe, than on any of them. I don’t know if he’s ever going to quite get over it. Dougald’s sitting there watching it day by day. He don’t say much, but he sees what’s happening to his kids.’ He drew on his cigarette.

  ‘I know,’ Susan said.

  ‘Now he’s got this heart thing. You can’t blame Dougald.’

  ‘I know all that. I know,’ she said irritably. ‘It’s not easy for him. But it’s five years. We always talk as if Moa just died last week.

  Bo smoked his cigarette. ‘You’d better let me drive the rest of the way. You’re tired.’

  ‘I’ll drive,’ she said firmly. ‘I feel like driving.’ She stood up. ‘I’m in the mood to drive. I’ll see you out there. I’m going to the toilet.’

  When she had gone Bo said to Annabelle, ‘You ever get to Venice in your travels?’

  ‘I was there for ten days five years ago.’

  ‘Was you with your husband or on your own?’

  ‘I was with my husband.’

  ‘Well you’ve been there,’ he said. ‘That’s something. Them two tattooed fellers are only hoping to get there.’ He glanced at her cup. ‘You done with that?’

  They got up and left the café. Susan was sitting in the passenger seat. Bo climbed into the driver’s seat beside her.

  She looked at him. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  He started the motor and turned around and looked at Annabelle, ‘You all set back there, Miss Annabellebeck?’ He reached and changed the tape and backed out of the servo. He swung the wheel and drove out onto the highway.

  Annabelle listened to the strumming of the guitar coming and going through the roadnoise, the voice of the singer telling biblical stories of defeat and longing, the awful brevity of life, and the binding code of something he called honour.

  Zamia Street

  THE SUN HAD BEEN UP FOR HOURS WHEN ANNABELLE GOT OUT OF bed. She stood at the window looking out over the half-shutters. Her parents’ old bedroom faced the sideway and the neighbouring house. From where she stood Annabelle could see the ragged jacarandas along Zamia Street, lopped in an ugly manner to make way for the powerlines. The one-storey houses lined up behind their mowed frontlawns facing the road, painted white, blue and green. Regular lines of pastel shutters closed against the hard winter light. Indian myna birds strutting about chattering on the mowed grass. The muted sound of teevees and radios from neighbouring houses. The persistent screeching of a captive cockatoo next door. There was no traffic. The only thing moving on the road was an old woman in a straw hat and red cardigan walking a Jack Russell, pausing at each jacaranda while the dog sniffed and peed. Coconut palms and the glossy foliage of Bowen mangoes in the gardens. Pink and orange hibiscus blooms fallen to the green buffalo grass. Wattle birds talking and stepping about among the red bottlebrush flowers in the sideway. Above the trees and the house roofs in the pale blue sky a lazy drift of smoke from the cane fires. The faint smell of burning. Time was at a standstill in Zamia Street. She didn’t mind that. She was comforted by her solitary possession of the old house. She could imagine her parents’ pleasure if they knew she had found a haven among their things, to know she had been comforted to sleep in their bed, as if she were still their child. Her mother and father, she realised only now that she was standing in their old room, would not have questioned her but would have accepted her return and made her welcome in the old-fashioned modest way that had been their style until the end. She was grateful to them. She was grateful to know that something endured of what they had once been, and that she was supported by that now in her own life. She would not have noticed this from Melbourne. Or would not have noticed it so immediately and so strongly. And they would not have drawn her attention to it. They would not have thought her ungrateful for not noticing the abiding spirit of their support. She realised suddenly how much she still loved them both.

  She watched the woman with the dog for a little longer, drawn into the mesmerising stillness of the sunlit street, then she wiped the tears from her cheeks with her fingers and turned from the window and went out of the bedroom into the lounge. The Burranbah stone lay on a circular table at the centre of the room where she had put it before going to bed. She stepped across and picked it up, hefting its weightiness, considering it and remembering Dougald Gnapun’s unease. The enormous weight of his silence in its presence, indeed the gravitas of his silence. A counterweight to the abiding silence of the stone. Her question as to its use marked by him, never to be answered. Maybe they all hate us, she thought. Deep down. For what we’ve stolen from them. For what we’ve done to them. It was the first time she had considered such a possibility and she was a little shocked by the implications of it. To be hated, after all. It was unthinkable. Like the Israelis and the Palestinians. Not to be forgiven by the people one lived among. For up here one lived among the Murris whether one wanted to or not. Townsville wasn’t Melbourne. Here the past could not be ignored, was not covered over and ob
scured by the accretions of city life, but was laid bare, the open wounds still visible in the features of people like Dougald Gnapun.

  The living room was a long rectangle at the centre of the original dwelling. Darkstained timber doors down either side leading off to the dining room, the kitchen, the study and the bedrooms. There were no windows. A subdued light penetrated from a louvred verandah which had been added by her father and which was separated from the living room by a fretworked blackwood screen. The room was furnished with heavy Edwardian pieces from Haddon Hill, the old cattle property out in the Suttor country. The low ceiling elaborately ornamented with geometric plaster designs, a heavy brass lamp on a chain hanging from a starburst of triangles at its centre. The stale, faintly disgusting smell of other people’s clothes. Other people’s lives. The anonymous, departed tenants. She would give the place a good spring-clean.

  She carried the stone to the end of the room and stood at the screen looking into the front verandah, wondering where to put it. She knew she should have the courage to accept Bo’s invitation and go with him to the playgrounds of the old people. She should do it, she knew that. She should face the consequences of knowing such things. Go to his heartland with him. For there surely would be consequences. It wouldn’t be a free ride. Nothing was ever a free ride. The verandah ran the full width of the house, its louvres giving directly onto the frontlawn and Zamia Street. Angled against one corner was her grandfather’s old squatter’s chair. An enormous heavy black thing, low to the ground, its timbers squared, the wide arms and leg-rests flat and uncompromising. Was there ever such a design conceived in any other culture, she wondered? It was a chair made for an exhausted man to rest in. Impossible to read a book in such a chair. Impossible for a woman wearing a skirt to sit in without being immodest. The chair and the low table beside it were piled with faded back issues of women’s magazines and newspapers, copies of the National Geographic. A stained Persian rug on the worn floorboards. She turned and surveyed the room. Dead insects, dust and cobwebs over everything, white cat hairs caught among the cobwebs. Annabelle turned to an Edwardian sideboard backed against the blackwood screen. On the marble an alabaster bust of Dante as a young man in the days of his Vita Nuova. Leaning against Dante a framed sepia photograph of her grandfather in the last months of his life. The old man stood in the paddock behind the homestead. He was wearing a black three-piece suit and a narrow-brimmed hat, just as Bo had remembered him. He was grinning, posed beside an enormous roan Shorthorn bullock, Paddy, the companion of the old cattleman’s senility. She heard a car turn into the drive and the slam of its door. She put the stone down beside her grandfather and leaned to see out the window.