by Peter Docker
What now?
She throws the orange hard hat down, and it clatters on the concrete.
She takes off across the four lanes of Maritana without waiting for the traffic to clear. At the last second a hole opens up between two 4WDs and she sprints across. She just gets to the other side of the road when a battered blue 74 Monaro pulls up.
Iz-Izzy!
The front door pops open. Leaning across from the driver’s side is the young woman from whom she rented the blanket last night for her trip to the morgue. There are several other people in the back of the car but no one appears to be looking at her.
Get in!
Izzy climbs into the empty front seat, and the young woman guns the throaty old V8.
Queenie
Pull the blanket up, and stay down.
Izzy slides down into the bucket seat as far as she can. Her head is below the window line. She pulls the blanket up to her chin.
What about the roadblocks? Izzy asks.
They shifted him off this road. Bin lookin for him nother way.
Looking for who?
The fierce young woman drives.
Where are we going?
Nother place.
Izzy sneaks a look around the corner of her seat to see four people in the back – a young man, a girl of about ten, and two old ladies. The little girl is staring at her but the others all seem to be looking elsewhere. Izzy looks back to the front.
I don’t even know your name.
My name Elizabeth. Call me Queenie.
Queenie.
Iz-Izzy.
In the back of the car, the two old women start singing a song. Izzy looks across to notice that Queenie is mouthing the words that they are singing. The young fulla in the back sits forward. He is about seventeen with perfect chocolate skin and a big Afro. He looks like he could pass for a Black Panther at a rally in the 60s, marching alongside Malcolm X, proud and strong.
This road is near the songline, he says quietly to Izzy.
Izzy looks up at him. She is thinking about how beautiful these people are. No wonder those old whitefulla pastoralists were caught up with Aboriginal women for so many generations, their lust must’ve been driving them crazy.
I’m Xavier.
Xavier, repeats Izzy.
Iz-Izzy, Xavier confirms.
What’s the song about?
Xavier cocks his head to listen for a moment. The little girl in the back seat reaches across and touches Izzy’s hair, then just as quickly withdraws her hand.
He’s chasing his wives, now. Not wives, but women who ... They are too strong, too fast ... He’s frustrated.
Xavier laughs aloud.
Who is he?
Tjilkarmata ... Porcupine Man ... Powerful Spirit ... This is a ... naughty story ... He’s chasing them, they don’t want to be caught up with by him because he ... Look! You can see his frustration ... That’s his side ... This woman’s side...
Izzy slides up to glance out the window. The spread-out dry-looking town has disappeared, replaced by spread-out dry-looking scrub. Izzy looks at the trees, his side of the highway/songline, then hers. On the women’s side of the line the trees are straight and tall with smooth, pale trunks. On his side the trees are all twisted and gnarled and darkened: surely the result of rising sexual frustration in a powerful creator spirit being.
Stay down, Iz-Izzy.
Sorry, Mum.
And Izzy’s comeback sees a sunburst erupt in the car as Queenie smiles.
There is something different about Queenie, about her Aboriginalness.
Xavier has the same look. Izzy remembers where she’s seen that face before – in Napier, up in the Kimberley, when she went fishing with her father all those years ago. The Aboriginal and Asian features blended in such an exotic way that the people were stunning to look at. She was fifteen, and remembers the hot quick embrace of the waiter at the pool bar as if it were yesterday. Why do some things stick in the mind, and not others? Maybe Queenie is from Napier? Is it polite to ask, that’s the thing?
I need a phone box.
Queenie gives her a look. She is still mouthing the words that the old ladies are singing in the back. For Izzy, the song is so foreign that to begin with she can hardly even differentiate between individual words, just endless tumbling syllables with soft consonants in a constant tumbling cadence. She has to slow her mind down to pick the phrasing and notice the repeated refrains.
You got a mobile? asks Queenie.
Izzy opens her bag to show Queenie her phone with SIM card and battery not inserted. Queenie nods. They fly down the highway into the oncoming night, pulled along by an ancient song encoded with Law, and an old V8.
Stay Down
Izzy looks up the main street of Boolbardji. Bayley Street. Bayley and Ford were two prospectors who found gold here in 1892. It could be a set from a Clint Eastwood movie. It could be a town in Afghanistan. Could be in North Africa. Except for the only pub still open across the road. That drags the scene back to Clint. The Denver City Hotel. Definitely Clint.
Where are you? asks Macca.
Down. Deep down.
A road train howls past, sucking the air away from the payphone cubicle. Izzy braces herself against the metal grill.
There were two other bodies at the morgue, Izzy says.
You went to the morgue? Your father would be proud.
They’d been executed. And they were hard men.
What does that tell you? prompts Macca.
Whoever whisked the bodies away has real power.
Don’t you whisk eggs?
I can’t work a toaster, admits Izzy.
And?
Our guy is good, she says.
Our guy?
Well, he knows how to take down choppers.
They say it was mechanical failure, says Macca.
You said Big Bill was a gang of ice-heads.
But – our guy?
Whatever.
And?
They were expecting trouble, says Izzy.
Izzy hears a muffled noise down the phone line.
What, Macca?
There is an electronic buzzing, and a clunk.
Nothing, Izzy.
So, why weren’t you told?
What do you mean? asks Macca.
Warned. About Big Bill?
The question is not why but who?
Shouldn’t it be whom?
You say whom, I say who – let’s call the whole thing off, says Macca.
Izzy looks around.
I felt safer in Kabul.
You were.
You OK, Macca?
Stay down, Izzy. Stay down.
The line goes dead. Izzy puts the handpiece back down, and quickly crosses through the park away from Bayley Street to the laneway behind the old Cobb & Co depot, and climbs into the 74 Monaro parked there. The lights are on in the police station just above them, but there is no movement.
You Knew
Back in the small room in Queensland, Macca looks up at the other men crowded into the room with him. He hangs up the phone. Macca eyeballs the three of them. They stare at him, unflinching.
You fucken arseholes! You knew! Macca says quietly.
You just tipped her off.
I asked her where she was. She wouldn’t tell me. I had to sound concerned, or she would’ve twigged something was up.
Are you a comedian, McIntyre? Is this what passes for comedy in the Queensland Police Service?
It’s the one Macca calls Clark Kent doing all the talking. Clark Kent for his thick-rimmed seeing-eye-glasses and black hair parted just so.
You knew.
This could cost you your career, McIntyre.
It’s already cost me a mate.
Think carefully about what you’re doing, McIntyre.
What an incompetent bunch of fucking clowns!
Macca turns and goes to storm out. He is stopped at the door by Clark Kent.
Where do you think you are goin
g, McIntyre?
Macca leans in close enough so that Clark Kent can smell his stale cigarette and coffee breath. He speaks very quietly.
Are you a tough guy, Clark? Is this what passes for tough guy in whatever Mickey Mouse agency you clowns come from?
Clark Kent looks down to notice that Macca already has his service revolver in his hand, and the snub nose .38 is pointed right at his groin.
We didn’t assess Big Bill as a target, says Clark Kent.
Macca presses the pistol into Clark’s nether regions.
A target? This is not a fucking firing range, dickhead.
Do you have any idea of what we are dealing with here, Detective McIntyre?
A rogue spy? One of you lot?
A soldier.
So, he’s not the fucking first, says Macca.
The type of warfare he is trained in...
Highly trained, says another spook.
...asymmetric, says Clark Kent.
Macca shakes his head. These blokes probably weren’t born when he was doing the type of training that they are talking about. He feels like he’s stumbled into a kindergarten where all the kids have grenades in their hands. How could these clowns be running anything? Look how well it’s going – they’re losing people at a rate of knots.
A good cop is dead, says Macca.
A good cop?
You better get out of my fucken way before I forget my manners, Sonny Jim.
I’m telling you we didn’t know.
If anything happens to the girl, you’ll be finding out firsthand about embarrassing bodies being whisked away from morgues.
Clark Kent very slowly steps aside.
Wild Dogs
The Monaro pulls up to a small house on the outskirts of town, and Queenie switches off the engine. The little house is hidden behind a few trees and a patch of scrub out the front. The front light is on but the rest of the house looks pretty dark. Queenie and Izzy get out and move their seats forward so that the people in the back of the coupé can climb out. The little girl jumps out and skips into the house. As the old ladies are getting out, they can hear the girl being greeted enthusiastically within the house. Izzy looks to Queenie for explanation but Queenie is busy helping the old girls. They all proceed into the house. No one has said anything to Izzy, so she just follows them into the house.
The front door opens into a small lounge room. The house smells of fire and strong sweet bush incense. The old ladies and Queenie go straight into the kitchen, where women’s voices can still be heard chatting to the girl in the ancient tongue of the desert. Izzy isn’t sure what to do. There are two young fullas in basketball singlets watching a muted television. Xavier greets them both with a complex handshake and joins them on the couch. The young fullas don’t look at her or greet her in any way.
Izzy feels like she’s walked into her own grandmother’s cottage in outer suburban Brisbane. The furniture is compact and neat, and everything in the room has been placed just so, probably many years ago. There is even a standard lamp in the corner of the room. Izzy is immediately drawn to a small side table where there are a number of photographs and artefacts. There are also photos above the table on the wall. The Family Wall, is what some young fullas on Psalm Island call this. Every house has one. Some are old photos in frames, some new, and some have just been blu-tacked onto the wall. There are school portraits, with a pretty girl in a yellow uniform that has to be Queenie as a child. There are footy teams, young men wearing their lace-up woollen jumpers with pride and smiling for the camera. There are photos of traditional groups, men and women with bodies decorated with ochre, feathers, and some kind of fluffy red material, dancing by the firelight. There are some very old photos of tough-looking men standing by bullock drays, and camels. But mainly there are photos of men in uniform. One Aboriginal soldier in front of the pyramids, one man standing under that big arch in Paris: the display is the history of Australians at war. There are four or five boomerangs, all different shapes, and intricately carved with kangaroo and emu motifs. There is one framed photo turned facedown. Izzy glances around at the young lads watching TV. She doesn’t feel like they are ignoring her – they just aren’t looking in her direction. She carefully lifts the frame until the light from the lamp falls on the image. There are two soldiers with weapons sitting in the doors of a Huey, with their feet on the skids. They have an arm casually draped over each other’s shoulder. The soldier on the left is Aboriginal. She wonders if this is the Old Man dead in the back of the prison transport vehicle. The other soldier causes her a sharp intake of breath. Even with his crew cut, her father’s shock of blonde hair jumps out at her more distinctly than his easy smile. They are both smiling – but their eyes are far away. Izzy drops the frame down, and it makes a little clatter on the table. She glances furtively back at the TV-watching lads but they don’t look up. Her pulse is racing now.
There is one place at the table where an item has been recently removed, leaving a faint dust mark on the dark surface of the wood. Behind the empty boomerang-shaped space is a photograph that is different from the others. The photographs are kind of a family tree – uncles, aunties, grandmothers, brothers, cousins, all crowded onto the table and the wall above the table. But this particular photo is a group of fierce young men in British colonial uniforms, posing in front of what looks like a bombed-out palace.
Izzy glances again at the young fullas on the couch. They still don’t seem to have noticed her. She is quickly learning how direct eye contact seems to hold little interest for this mob. Maybe it is rude to look straight at people? People who have lived without clothes for an eternity would need to develop strict eye focus discipline, she thinks. She wants to pick up the bombed-out-palace photograph but doesn’t. She doesn’t trust her hands not to drop it. She leans down. At first Izzy thinks the photo must be of the Native Police – irregular paramilitary units raised by early white Australians to disperse the natives from the lands of the all-powerful squatters. She’d read about them on the plane over from Melbourne, and the Psalm Island mob carried many stories of atrocities committed by Queensland Native Mounted Police against their forebears barely a hundred years before. But this photograph was not taken in Australia. The dark-skinned soldiers are not Aboriginal. It is the curved knives that they all have a hand on, as well as their ancient rifles, which give them away as the most feared of all soldiers in the British Imperial Forces – the Gurkhas. Izzy notices that just near this photo there is another dust mark, a photo has been removed as well as that boomerang.
In the kitchen, Izzy can hear the women talking. From somewhere else in the house she hears some low singing. It is a voice she recognises. She follows the sound down the little hallway to the end room, where the door is ajar, with a sliver of light spilling out. Izzy slowly pushes open the door and stands outside the room looking in. The Old Bloke with the wooden leg is sitting on the floor. The room is bare apart from a mattress on the floor behind the Old Bloke. There is someone sleeping on the mattress, swathed in blankets, and with their head turned towards the wall so that Izzy can’t see who it is. The Old Bloke looks up at her and smiles through his song. Izzy is smiling back. No one is ever surprised to see her. He sings a couple more phrases and stops. He leans over and picks up the bottle of wine next to him, and slowly pours himself a glass. He sniffs the glass, and looks up at Izzy.
Gotta let im breathe.
The Old Bloke takes a sip.
Cape Mentelle, 86, he comments, and takes another sip.
Izzy smiles.
You running, girl?
No ... Yes.
Who chasing you?
Wild dogs.
The Old Bloke takes another sip, and considers Izzy’s answer, as if he is rolling it around on his palate with the wine.
Where you running to?
Dunno, Izzy says honestly.
The Old Bloke sips his wine. Izzy is wondering if she is running away from something, or towards something. Both. The photo on the TV new
s of Larry from the morgue is floating around her periphery like a big storm waiting to cross the coast. Did she get him killed? She could fly back to Melbourne like she has from so many other war zones, forget about all this, and who would really care? It keeps coming back to who cares. But this is not a war zone in a foreign country. This is right here at home. And if nobody cares, well...
The Old Bloke clears his throat.
Wild dog ... separate him from the pack ... look him fair in the eye ... look him in the eye until you know him ... too well...
The sleeping man on the mattress behind the Old Bloke whimpers in his sleep. The Old Bloke carefully sets down his glass of 86 merlot, and takes up his tap-sticks. Izzy can see that they are hand-carved dark wood. He taps them gently and starts to sing quietly. Izzy stands there for a while longer, but the Old Bloke has gone far away with his song.
She turns and walks back down the short hallway, through the lounge, and into the kitchen. The kitchen is warm. There is a wood stove with the top off, and the flames flicker unhurriedly around the small mallee roots. There are five older women sitting around a little table with Queenie. There is a photo facedown on the table. From the size of it, Izzy is sure that it is the missing photo from the little table in the lounge room. It is a new wooden frame.
The little girl from the car is on the knee of one of the old ladies.
Queenie introduces Izzy.