Dirt Music

  At the kitchen table she glanced at the grubby envelope.

  Georgiana Jutland

  c/o Post Office

  White Point

  Western Australia

  She opened it with a butter knife and drew out a blank fold of notepaper. There was nothing written there. Just faint blue lines and the torn holes of the spiral binding from your bog-standard notepad. As she tilted the envelope up to make sure, a trickle of dust fell between her fingers onto the scrubbed table. It looked like dried paprika or chilli powder but when she dipped a finger in and put it to her tongue she knew it was nothing more than red earth.

  The envelope with its boab tree stamp was postmarked Broome a few days before. Two thousand kilometres away by road. The far north, the edge of the tropics. She recognized the pink dirt of the pindan country; it wasn’t the sort of natural colour you forgot once you’d seen it for yourself. With the paper’s edge she scraped the dust into a little pile. There was more here than she first thought—perhaps a teaspoonful. It was no accident; it was some gesture.

  She screwed up the envelope and tossed it into the kitchen bin. Then she stared at the little mound of dirt a while until, wetting a finger, working dab by dab, she ate it.

  She wiped the table clean. On the VHF Jim announced he was only ten minutes out. When Georgie rinsed her mouth at the basin it was like spitting blood. She brushed her teeth and wiped the basin down. Gone.

  three

  HE WALKS the narrow blacktop in the warm dark. The sea is miles behind but he feels it at his back. Above the murky hinterland, stars hang like sparks and ash from a distant bushfire. By dawn his hamstrings are tight and his feet sore in their boots. The pack is snug enough in his back but the swag lashed across it teeters with every stride and butts the top of his head. He trudges into the rising sun until an old truck eases up beside him and an arm motions him to get in.

  The man is long and thin with a shapeless hat and stringy grey hair to his shoulders. He looks tired, waits for Fox to speak and then sighs a suit-yourself sigh and just drives. Fox glances behind at the flatbed where several olive trees lie wrapped and lashed beneath a tarp.

  They drone through floodplain country and into the beginnings of rich soil where late crops stand brassy in the sun. They veer north into the midlands wheatbelt where harvesters raise clouds of chaff and dust across the rolling hills.

  This is it, says the driver at New Norcia.

  Thanks, says Fox.

  That Darkie could play.

  Fox climbs out.

  Headin north?

  He drags his pack and bedroll off the rusty truckbed.

  Fox cinches himself in. The sun is in his face.

  It was only a matter of time, the man says. You would’ve buggered off eventually.

  Thanks again.

  Worth it for the conversation.

  Fox walks through the old Spanish monastery town with barely a glance. Town cars and farm utes roll by but he doesn’t even bother sticking his finger out. At the outskirts he shrugs his load onto the gravel shoulder and waits. Flies suck the sweat around his eyes, along his neck. In the paddock’s remnant stand of gums, cockatoos stir. Eventually a Kenworth hulks up in a gust of airbrakes. He throws his kit up and climbs in.

  G’day, says the truckie.

  G’day.

  This man is the colour of a boiled crab. His nose is thin and ruined. His ears are crisp with lesions.

  Great Northern Highway, says the driver.

  That’s it, says Fox settling back into the smell of sweat and old socks and fried food.

  Get yeself a hiding?

  Fox grimaces. Hasn’t thought how he must still look after swimming and walking home.

  Face says everything, dunnit.

  Yeah.

  They ride in silence the rest of the morning with the cricket trickling in like water torture from the radio. The aircon dries the perspiration then chills him. As they lurch inland, the trailers swaying behind them, the country grows dry and low and wheat gives out to sheep paddocks which seem thinner and more marginal until only squat mulga scrub remains; just olive dabs of vegetation spread over stony yellow dirt.

  Wildflower country, says the truckie, failing to suppress a fart. Should see it in September. Flowers as far as ye can look.

  Fox can’t imagine it. He hasn’t expected this sudden absence of trees. He’s hardly been on the road five hours and already it’s just flat dirt out there.

  So, what you pissin off from?

  People, says Fox.

  People in particular, or people in general?

  Both.

  The truckie takes the hint and contents himself with the cricket match on the radio. It’s hard to think of anything more dreary but at least it spares him music.

  A steer lies with its legs in the air like an overturned table at the road’s edge. Rippling black sheet of birds.

  Out of the low scrub a gum rises in the distance and as they pass Fox sees a white cross and a pair of elastic-sided boots. A scene from a Burl Ives song. Old Burl. How the old man loved him. Wrap me up in my stockwhip and blanket.

  At the Paynes Find roadhouse Fox sits up in the Kenworth’s cab while the bowser pumps diesel into its enormous tanks. He looks out in search of a settlement to go with the name but there’s only scrub and stony ground. Eventually the smell of diesel drives him out. He buys a Coke and sits in the sweltering shade while his driver, having made it plain he wants to eat alone, hoes into a baconburger at a table inside.

  Caravans towed by Pajeros and Range Rovers pull in from the north and line up for fuel. Old people with baggy shorts and leathery tans cross the oil-tamped dirt of the forecourt to the reeking bogs.

  A young bloke in khaki work gear and steel-capped boots comes out of the roadhouse dragging a gust of refrigerated air and cigarette smoke with him.

  Sads, he says disgustedly.

  Sorry? says Fox finishing his Coke.

  Sads, the bloke says, jerking his head at the retirees emerging from the toilets to compare mileages. See Australia and Die.

  Fox shrugs.

  Some of em do the whole trip. North, then across the top to theTerritory. Queensland. Drive south. Come back across the Nullarbor. The big circle. Then they start again. I blame private superannuation. They clog up the road. Where you headed?

  Oh, says Fox, up.

  Hitchin?

  You can tell?

  Practice, mate.

  Fox looks at the embroidered logo on his workshirt. A gold miner.

  Headin back to Magnet in a sec. Give you a lift if you don’t mind ridin in the back. Me mate’s takin a dump.

  Thanks.

  The diesel bowser continues to roll its eyes at the Kenworth. The luckless motorists caught behind the truck’s trailers wait it out. Fox hauls his gear down from the cubby behind the cab and humps it to the miner’s trayback Cruiser.

  All afternoon from the windblown tray of the Landcruiser he watches the mulga country gradually transformed by the emergence of granite breakaways. The rocky escarpments come as a relief from the horizontal monotony. Convoys of vans and towed dinghies blow by southward. But for the occasional northbound roadtrain, the traffic is all headed the other way. In the cab they’re playing Judas Priest; it’s mercifully muted by windrush.

  At Mount Magnet the young blokes set him down at a corner that feels like a crossroads of some moment. This is the end of the south. Farm fences are gone and soil has long been replaced by dust or grit. The Indian Ocean is hours to the west. On the roadsign, towns have three- or four-digit distances. He tries to imagine the gibber plains and red dunes to the east, the impossible amplitude of the continent. They say it’s empty and the idea draws him but he can’t get his mind around it. Thinks of the north the old man spoke ofwith pride and fear in his voice, the rugged stone ranges, the withering heat, the ceaseless blasting and digging, the epic drinking that made the boozy south seem temperate, the cattle herds pounding red dust skyward and the seasons disco
unted to plain Wet or Dry.

  He hoists his kit and considers his options. It’s not too late to steer seaward to Highway 1 and head north along the coast, but he has momentum now and he knows the inland route will take him past Wittenoom and the mine that orphaned him. He plumps for pressing on.

  He pulls the bankroll from his pack and stuffs a few notes into his shorts to buy food. He crosses the wide, empty street to the BP station and orders himself a meal. While he sits black kids come and go. They buy Cokes and icecream and stand out on the tarmac to tease each other and mug at him through the window. Later he straps himself to his load and they follow him a little way, giggling, cheeky and loud as cockatoos.

  Nobody stops so he walks to burn the time. The sun gets low but the heat seems to abide in the land. On the other side of town at sunset with no chance of a lift in such gloom, he veers into the scrub to find a place to camp.

  He heads for a granite outcrop that he spies over the mulga and there he finds a decent patch of dirt. He unrolls his swag and collects sticks before the night closes in. The fire he lights is more for illumination than anything else. Having eaten not long back he doesn’t bother to cook. By the glow of his little fire he examines the contents of his pack, the dried food, the billycan, lighter, torch, two changes of clothes, spare socks, waterbottles, pocket knife, a boning knife and steel, the floppy hat he’s forgotten to wear all day, sunscreen, repellent. He carries a few first aid supplies. Band-Aids of course. Tweezers, Betadine. But no book, not a one. It’s a bad oversight. He wants to be alone, God knows, but not without something to read.

  He’s sore now and his skin itches all over where scabs have formed. His nose is peeling and his lips cracked. He pulls his boots off and feels the blisters on his toes where the skin is still soft.

  He doesn’t think of Georgie Jutland. She hovers, of course, like something you can’t quite believe in, but he doesn’t let himself think of her. Stretched on his swag with the sheet half off, he thinks of himself in the paddock this morning kneeling with the knife to cut the end from a melon and slide his hand in, his arm to the elbow. It was hot from the sun and sweet, winy as the sea he’d been dreaming of, and days past eating. He took a mouthful to feel it fizz a little on his tongue. Even now he imagines he tastes that fermenting sweetness. It was the last thing he did before pulling his money from the stone on the hill and setting out. He doesn’t know why he did it, though it was true that his mouth was parched from the night and day before and from what he’d decided to do. It was the sacrament he couldn’t admit to. Just goodbye, that’s all. A spitting of seeds, a quick turning for the hill.

  Neither melancholy nor creeping anxiety keep him awake tonight. The farm could be burning but he sleeps. Last thing he hears is the curlew.

  THE SKY is still layered pink and grey when the seventies-model Bedford van pulls over in a gale of dust and music. He steps up to the door and pulls it open and the aircon and the thumping bass blast him head-on. The driver is in his twenties with sunbleached dreadlocks and flat blue eyes, the very picture of a surfer.

  Got any juice money? he yells across the music.

  I spose.

  Orright, then.

  Fox reefs the side door open and throws in his gear. It’s pandemonium in there. A naked foam mattress with bites out of it and a sheet skewed halfway across it. On top are cheap PVC stuffbags, a fishing rod, jaffle iron, Igloo esky, camp oven, wank mags, a bong made from garden hose and a Mr Juicy bottle. A carton of Victoria Bitter has burst and cans lie all about.

  He climbs into the passenger seat and feels the van surge away. Holden motor, you can bet on it.

  Where you goin? says the driver, turning the tapedeck down a notch.

  Wittenoom.

  Fuck. Ghost town, innit?

  Fox shrugs.

  I’m not a tidy packer, says the surfer who catches him looking back at the shambles in the back. Only bought it last night. Well, won it as a matter of fact.

  How?

  By bein better than the other bloke, of course, he said with a hoarse laugh.

  The van stinks of mull smoke and dirty clothes and the chilled air pouring from the vents smells mouldy. Fox’s boots settle into a snarl of junkfood containers, beercans, crushed maps, and plastic bags. At the uncommon bends in the two-lane, a half-full Southern Comfort bottle rolls against one ankle.

  Rusty, says the driver.

  Lu, he offers reluctantly.

  The music hammers at him; he feels it at the back of his throat. Steely Dan, their best album. Full of angular licks and slick changes, lyrics that peck at you. But he doesn’t want to hear it. Music unstitches him now; he can do without it.

  They drive hard into the morning. The tape restarts itself over and over. Rusty, it seems, hardly hears it. The country spreads out into salt lakes and vast baked pans wherein tiny islands of mallee hold up. They blow through the old mine-town of Cue where diggings and slagheaps become landscape.

  At Meekatharra the earth is red. It stains the tar streets and the vehicles and buildings along them. Rusty veers into a service station and looks expectantly at Fox. It takes a moment to realize he wants money.

  You fill it and I’ll buy breakfast.

  I’ve eaten, says Fox, though his billy tea and muesli bar are long behind him.

  Rusty takes three twenties from him and limps inside while Fox pumps the tank full. There’s something about Rusty that strikes him as odd. Sees him limp from the restaurant to the toilets. On the way back to the glass doors his gait seems milder. When he comes back he hands Fox a burger and a bag of doughy fries and he drops a carton of similar delicacies onto the seat. Fox registers the clonk of Rusty’s shin as he climbs in. Rusty looks at him with a sudden ferocity.

  Artificial, orright? I’m a fuckin pegleg.

  Oh.

  Yeah, friggin oh.

  Rusty pulls a monster rollie from his pocket, a roach the size of a turd. He lights up and wheels them out into the street.

  Some dickhead in his Range Rover backed into me, says Rusty. Out the front of the Margaret River tavern. I was sittin on me car. He reverses up, pins me at the knee, totally friggin crushes it. Some fancypants lawyer from Cottesloe.

  I spose you were surfing at Margaret River.

  Not anymore. And that prick gets himself a bunch of hot-shot mates and they do me out of a decent pay-out.

  Out on the highway Rusty opens it up and the Bedford’s transmission gulps.

  Automatic, he says. Cripple-friendly.

  The van gets up so much speed that it floats, seems to hydroplane across the water mirages on the road.

  Ever felt bitter? says Rusty not noticing that Fox has killed the stereo. You look the contented type.

  That’s me.

  Fox watches him toke on the joint with all the pleasure of a man siphoning petrol. The van fills with smoke but it’s too hot outside to crank down a window. Right at the dag-end of his smoke he offers Fox a puff but he declines.

  Chuck me that Woolworths bag behind the seat, will ya?

  Fox pivots and pulls the bag onto the seat between them.

  Got some good gear in Geraldton.

  Fox nods.

  Well, take a look.

  He opens the plastic bag and sees a jumble of tubes, bottles, cellophane sachets. There are boxes of prescription drugs in there and several syringes.

  Starting a pharmacy, says Fox.

  My oath.

  • • •

  All day Rusty grips the wheel but his pace is erratic. The breakneck speed of the morning gives out to fitful surges and lulls by midday. Now and then they pull over so he can stuff a morphine suppository. In the afternoon Fox offers to drive but he’s rebuffed and Rusty pilots the van at a pace that has triple-trailer roadtrains honking as they overtake in slipstream blasts that shove the Bedford aside.

  Almost without noticing the transition, Fox sees that the country has become vivid, dramatic. The midwest is behind them. This is the Pilbara. Everything looks big and
Technicolor. Ahead the stupendous iron ranges. There are trees again. This land looks dreamt, willed, potent.

  Fark, says Rusty apropos of nothing.

  At Newman they drive, lost for a while, through the big mine-town’s circuitous streets. There are lush lawns here and flowers, mists of pumped water that soften the lines of neat bungalows and company shops. On one corner a Haulpak truck towers over the suburb. Water, iron ore, money.

  Eventually Fox coaches Rusty back out onto the highway which climbs into the Opthalmia Ranges whose bluffs and peaks and mesas rise crimson, black, burgundy, terracotta, orange against the cloudless sky. Gully shadows are purple up there and the rugged layers of iron lie dotted with a greenish furze of spinifex. You sense hidden rivers. Your ears pop with altitude. Closer to the road, on scree slopes the colour of dry blood, the smooth white trunks of snappy gums suspend crowns of leaves so green it’s shocking. Mobs of white cockatoos explode from their boughs. The colours burn in his head. Wide bends reveal the country behind darkened by the shadows of late afternoon. Fox feels his head slump back on his neck. He comes from low, dry, austere country, limestone and sand and grasstrees. Apart from the sea itself the only majestic points at home are the sculpted dunes. Even the graceful tuart tree seems dowdy up here.

  Jesus, that’s me done, says Rusty veering off into a roadside scrape where a snappy gum and a few tufts of scrub mark a rough lookout.

  Fox realizes that twilight has fallen. He’s a little stoned from the smoke in the van. The sky is puce, the peaks and crags of the iron ranges black against it.

  Rusty kills the motor, throws the door open and hot, clean air rushes in. It feels velvety. Rusty pisses on the dirt.

  Fox climbs out into the still heat of evening.

  They break up dead wood for a fire and by dark the billy is boiling. Fox throws tea leaves into the water but lets the tea stand so long Rusty picks it up and takes it to the van where they’ve left the mugs. Fox feels tired and passive; he doesn’t care.

  Spose you want me to cook, too, eh? calls Rusty.

  I don’t mind.

  Need a pep-up?