Dirt Music

  You wamme to fill it? asks a crewcut woman through her teeth.

  That turn-off go to the coast? says Fox.

  Yeah. You want petrol or not?

  Ask him.

  Thanks for nothin, says Nora.

  Fox walks fast until he finds a rhythm. The air is woolly. Sweat leaves him purblind. He thinks of the hat but the sun is low. The mulga scrub is thin and burnt on the gravel track either side of him. There are no trees in sight. He is the tallest thing on the plain.

  After a long time he hears a motor and the sound of spitting gravel. He moves over, doesn’t stick his hand out. Hears the vehicle slow behind him.

  You forgot something, says the girl from the driver’s window.

  It hits him in the belly and knocks him winded to his knees and when the van finishes its dirt spraying U-turn and its brief wallow in the mulga scrub on its way back to the highway, he finds the vacuum-sealed parcel of porterhouse in the dust by his knees. He gets his breath back. He picks it up, hauls himself upright and presses on into the sunset and the gathering mosquitoes.

  JUST ON DUSK he comes to a mangrove creek reduced to a trickle by low tide and he presses on past it to a stony, treeless cape from which the Indian Ocean is still visible in the twilight. He picks his way down to a basin of coarse sand above the tideline and throws his load. He drinks a litre of water and sheds his shirt and shorts to climb over into a rockpool and wash the sweat away. He has a momentary shiver wondering about crocodiles but that’s as cool as he gets. The water is tepid.

  For a moment before he dresses he feels refreshed, but the heat makes him clammy again by the time he’s unrolled his swag in the thickening dark.

  A little higher on the cape he sees a campfire and his spirits sink. Then he thinks of the beef fillet there on his pack. He pulls his baking boots on.

  Only the pale sand track guides his way up the rocky ridge.

  Hello the house! he calls from a discreet distance.

  Gawd aggie! someone says.

  There’s the clang of something dropped in surprise.

  Sorry to startle you, Fox says, walking toward the fire which lights a pair of legs.

  Scared the tripe out of me!

  It was a man’s voice. Older. Fox shields his eyes from the fire. He makes out a caravan and vehicle.

  I’m from down the beach a bit.

  Orright, the man said cautiously.

  Where’s that lid gone? said a woman.

  Fox is suddenly blinded by a torchbeam.

  Everythin orright there, sport? What’s that you got?

  Meat, says Fox proffering the parcel. He tries to explain that he’s got too much and that he’s happy to share it with them or they can even take the lot—he doesn’t mind. But the man and woman behind the light are doubtful. He tells them it’s vacuum-sealed, that he didn’t steal it, that it’s perfectly all right, that he doesn’t want it going to waste.

  Spose it does look a bit suss, he concedes.

  Beware Greeks with freebies, says the woman in a tone of amusement.

  Well, says Fox. Troy just spoiled it for the rest of us.

  The woman laughs. They switch off the torch and invite him in. A fluoro strip sputters to life above the caravan door. Fox sees an old man in a white singlet with a pair of stubbies hanging off his bum. In a folding chair a silver-haired woman holds a glass of white wine. Firelight catches her specs and the chain that hangs from them. They introduce themselves, Horrie and Bess. Fox hands them the beef. Horrie passes him a beer. He drinks it in one gluttonous swallow and then stands there suddenly embarrassed.

  Thirsty, says Horrie.

  Oh. Yeah.

  You want somethin for this meat?

  No. Maybe a few litres of water.

  No worries. Easy.

  Here, Lu, says Bess. Sit down and put on some repellent. You’ll be eaten alive. Sandflies are worse than the mozzies.

  Fox takes a seat. They have a folding table and esky out here on the sand beside the fire.

  You’re a student, then, says Bess.

  No, he murmurs. Unemployed.

  Headin south to the cool weather, I imagine.

  North, actually.

  Horrie, he’s as mad as us.

  Every sensible bugger hit the road south weeks ago, says the old man. No one heads north this time of year except the knuckleheads.

  And those on a mission, says Bess. Which are you, young man?

  Fox laughs. The knuckleheads, I’m afraid.

  Same as us, says Horrie.

  I beg to differ.

  She differs but I’ve never seen her beg, the old boy pronounces with a laugh.

  Here are those others you used to prize, says Bess, But why go further we?

  Here she goes!

  The future?—Well, I would advise you let the future be, unshown by me!

  Oh, says Fox taken aback. That’s…isn’t that Hardy?

  Get him another beer, Horrie.

  She taught English, the old man says. Forty years.

  What university did you go to? Bess asks.

  Ah. I didn’t finish school.

  But you read.

  Well, yeah.

  Actual books? Actual poetry?

  Oh boy, mutters Horrie.

  Not just information, then?

  Leave the boy alone, Bess.

  Fox laughs uneasily. No. Just books.

  Who?

  Bess.

  Fox tries to think.

  Hemingway, I imagine.

  He shrugs.

  Byron, by the look.

  He wrinkles his nose.

  Blake, perhaps?

  Aha, says Fox.

  Aha indeed. Then Wordsworth, of course. But not Shelley.

  You got me, he smiles, amazed.

  So who do you identify with?

  This week? Keats.

  Oh, you sad boy. A name writ in water.

  Let’s eat this bloody meat, says Horrie.

  Fox stays and helps them grill steaks from the fillet. They have a tossed salad and cold potatoes. Although he can’t keep up with Bess’s banter he enjoys sitting there with them. He thinks wistfully of his parents, the idea of them growing old together like these two. He was young when his mother died but he remembers the fiery talk, their combative devotion.

  After a couple of hours he gets up and thanks them, wishes them a good trip north. The old couple rhapsodize about the vast Kimberley country ahead while he stands there, inching away by degrees.

  This state, says Horrie, is like Texas. Only it’s big!

  Fox laughs and seizes the moment.

  That night he coats himself in repellent and lies on his swag to watch the stars and listen to the tide fill the bay. He still has flashes behind the eyes now and then but not enough to keep him awake. At dawn he sees a wallaby observing him from the scrub, eyes bright, ears up. Birdsong drifts down the ridge high and gay as playground noise. The wallaby blurs away the moment he moves.

  While the billy heats on the fire, Fox climbs over the rocks to where the tide has receded again. The limestone buttresses of the cape trickle and seep. With a flat stone he knocks a few oysters open andsucks the meat and liquor out. He walks seaward through the puddles and freshets the tide has left. A mile out the sea is the weirdest milky blue.

  In one pellucid tidepool he reaches down for a gorgeous blue-spotted stone but he hesitates when its markings begin to move. Blue spots morph into yellow dabs. The stone opens an eye and—fuck!—he recoils in shock. An octopus, a blue-ringed octopus, no less. And his fingers only a handspan from touching it. A bite would have killed him before he reached camp. Total nervous shutdown. Gone.

  He hurries back to his fire, makes tea and eats a couple of muesli bars. The girl bothers him. Nora. He wonders what he could have done.

  He’s packing his gear when Horrie hails him.

  Headin to Broome, right?

  Yeah, says Fox. It’s on the way.

  Come with us. Didn’t realize you were hoof
in it. We’re headin off after lunch. I want to fish this incoming tide. Like to fish?

  Fox nods. He thinks about it. He wants to get going but by the time he makes it out onto the highway and waits an hour in the stinging sun they’ll be by anyway. He pulls out his cloth hat and accepts.

  Horrie and he fish the tide in the mounting heat. It’s humid. The air is brothy. Fox casts with a borrowed rod. He sends a jig into the cloudy turquoise surge about the rocks.

  Got an ambition? asks Horrie.

  Fox shakes his head not quite truthfully.

  Didn’t think I did anymore either, says the old man. Except catch that fifty-pound barramundi every man comes north for. Been everywhere, I have. Merchant marine.

  Saw the tattoos, murmurs Fox.

  But somehow ambitions are shoved at ya. You probly guessed it about Bessie. Why she doesn’t get up much. Abbreviation, eh? Gives you a new outlook.

  Fox finishes his retrieve and takes the jig in hand. Looks blankly at the old man.

  You got any idea what I’m talkin about, mate?

  No, he admits.

  She’s on the way out, son. Cancer of the bowel. Like it’s goin outta fashion.

  Oh, man.

  I’m all for circlin the wagons and takin every pill and poison they give her, but she’s not havin any of it. She wants to go out with her boots on, give it the big Up Yours. You know, blaze of glory. She’s a romantic. She wants drama. Wants to drive into the eye of the storm sorta thing. Somethin big. Cyclones, sunsets, mountains, red rivers two miles wide. Trees with cars hangin in them. She wants to sail off the edge of the world.

  God, Horrie.

  Russian bloke told me once. Said we all die. But you might as well die with music. Go out big. You see what I mean? She wants big music, Lu. And north is where you get it. The Kimberley, mate. Big weather, big fish, big distances—larger’n life. And that’s my ambition. To get her there. Do her proud. Bloody drive right into it, whatever’s out there, whatever’s comin.

  Fox can only nod.

  She likes you. The poems and everythin. But just be…understandin.

  Sure.

  Taught me a lot, she has. More about music than poetry. But I’m glad she can talk poems with you. You like music, Lu?

  Well—

  Mate, those Russians.

  Russians?

  I can’t get a bite. What say we pack it in, hit the frog and toad.

  • • •

  Out on Highway 1 the going is slow. The old Nissan Patrol is a roaring tin trunk. It slams and jiggers on its short wheel base, the suspension all but buggered and with the caravan in tow it barely makes it into top gear even on the endless flat plain. Bess natters about animal instinct, about birds and fish and ants and the way they think in groups. They hear each other think, she says. I believe that. A school of fish turns as one. Yes, and a flock of sparrows. They resonate. And so do we. Fox thinks of those termite mounds. And yes, he’s seen the shoal of fish as one living thing. A thousand times. But Horrie has Prokofiev or some bloody thing on the tiny tapedeck. It sets his teeth on edge and blunts whatever it is Bess is saying about Wordsworth. Bess puts him in mind of his mother. She’s more frenetic, and not beautiful as he always remembers her, but it seems that Bess looks for the links in things, not the gaps. What he recalls most vividly about his mother apart from her vanilla scent is the way she appeared to see the world as holy, joined, commingling. But he can’t hold the thought with all this talk. And—God!—the sawing music.

  When the old truck boils over, he takes it as a mercy. Horrie discovers they’ve blown a fan belt and Fox helps him fit a ragged spare. Outside, the heat is astounding, it seems to have intensified with every passing mile. While crows call in the glare overhead Fox and Horrie refill the radiator. Back underway, Bess asks for Bach. Fox recognizes the tune to an old hymn, and how it eats at him. He sees himself, a boy in his shorty pyjamas on the verandah. The smell of burning mosquito coils. He wills the music to end before it fucks him up entirely.

  Bess plasters a handkerchief to her face.

  The Patrol soon boils again and Horrie is forced to cut the aircon to keep the old bus going. He decides that his old mate Shostakovich is the go. Piano quintet! he yells. Some big music!

  Fox slumps back in the luggage space behind them, sweltering. The music is jagged and pushy and he for one just doesn’t want to bloody hear it but the outbursts of strings and piano are as austere and unconsoling as the pindan plain out there with its spindly acacia and red soil.

  Cars and roadtrains overtake in slams of wind. The dirt is the colour of food. This music feels like it’s peeling his skin. He can’t afford this shit. He needs covering, not stripping. Since that terrible night in which everything seemed to unravel in a series of jumpy, uncertain moments, everyone dead so sudden like that, all he’s wanted is to be left alone, and music is a fucking bully—it’s the last thing he needs; it’ll rip him to pieces. There’s simply not enough of him left to withstand it.

  Bess is writhing now. Horrie pulls over. She staggers off into the acacias, but there isn’t enough vegetation to hide in so the old bloke follows her out with a shielding blanket. Fox averts his head, swelters. Bess comes back in girlish high spirits but it’s plain she’s masking her embarrassment and discomfort.

  How’s your geography, Lu? Draw a line east of this very spot. Right across the country. Now name everything in the way of your line.

  Fox shrugs.

  Bess reels them off: the Great Sandy Desert, the Tanami Desert, Tennant Creek, the Barkly Tableland, Mount Isa, Charters Towers, everything between them and the Great Barrier Reef.

  He smiles as indulgently as he can.

  She twists in her seat, looking feverish.

  Now a literary litmus test, she says.

  Bess, says Horrie, wiping at her one-handed with a damp cloth as he drives.

  Virginia Woolf.

  Fox wrinkles his nose.

  And why not?

  Never trust a non-swimmer, he says, glad that at least the music’s off for the moment.

  Would that account for Shelley?

  Bad sailor, too.

  Careful, she says. I married a bad sailor.

  Oi!

  Melville, then.

  He nods.

  But that shark poem, Lu—pale ravener of horrible meat— the sound of an anxious wader.

  Fox laughs, bewildered by her antic talk. She goes on without him, jaunty as you like, answering her own questions with a quaver in her voice. Looking miserable and desperate, Horrie watches Fox in the rearview mirror. He slaps Mussorgsky into the deck and Fox squirms in his nest of luggage.

  Twice more they stop for Bess. She squats behind the burr-specked blanket, cries out in pain.

  Late in the afternoon the radiator boils again and they pull up to the thin shade of a solitary bloodwood. As he slides out to help Horrie, Bess catches his arm. Swimmers, she says. Her breath is bitter. She declaims into his face:

  And what of the dead? They lie without shoes

  in their stone boats. They are more like stone

  than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse

  to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

  Geez, Bess, he says wiping her spittle from his cheek.

  Anne Sexton. Christ knows, she had some swimming to do.

  Beneath the hood Horrie is bawling. Fox stands beside him a moment, touches the old bloke’s shoulder. Horrie flinches away. Fox feels the urge to drag his pack out onto the pindan and take his chances alone, but he fetches the jerrycan of water and helps fill the whining radiator.

  For a blessed while Bess sleeps.

  Stay a few days with us in Broome, says Horrie. For Bess.

  Fox licks his lips. Night falls. They creep on. It feels like walking pace. Horrie goes searching for Arvo Pärt on the seat beside him. They yaw across the lightless highway. Out in the black distance the sky flashes. Campfires flicker beside the road. People hunker over meals. Their vehicles ang
le off into the scrub, some barely off the blacktop.

  Like the Middle Ages out there, says Bess, reviving. Look at them all. Makes you think of pilgrims, traders, refugees, crusaders, lunatics. You half expect to see Byzantium appear round the next bend. Except there are no bends. Bend this road, Horrie. At once.

  Settle down, love.

  Arvo, she says in pain. I want Arvo. It’s death music. Arvo in the arvo.

  Bess, love—

  Don’t be shocked, Lu. Death’s been round us before.

  No, Bess.

  Here’s James Dickey. Used to call him James Dickhead but he redeems himself with this.

  For Chrissake, woman!

  The old girl yells:

  I wash the black mud from my hands.

  On a light given off by the grave

  I kneel in the quick of the moon

  At the heart of a distant forest

  And hold in my arms a child

  Of water, water, water.

  Luther Fox flinches at this. He has to get out. Bess stabs the tape into the machine and slowly, tidally, the vehicle fills with the tolling of a bell and a descending string lick starts up. Something rolling down inevitably, compulsively, almost obsessive. Down. Diving. Skin-crackling. So beautiful it hurts.

  That bell drones on and on, trapping him beneath a sky and a moon of his very own, on his knees, like the last man alive hearing the sound of the others lilting off into oblivion. He doesn’t give a shit that it’s beautiful; he wants it off.

  Along the final punishing straights of the Roebuck Plains he covers his ears. The moment he sees the distant lights of Broome he’s planning his escape. No plea, no weeping sailor will stand in his way.

  four

  THAT SUMMER Georgie’s nervous cooking jag became a feverish binge, as though she was trying to cook her way out of uncertainty. Even Jim, who loved the food, began to wonder aloud whether she wasn’t a little touched by the heat.

  One night when she was cooking a risotto in her bikini and taking a bloodyminded pleasure from the endless, steamy stirring and folding, Jim came upstairs and just stood there and laughed. It startled her, broke her concentration. She’d been brooding about Shover McDougall.

  Jim opened his mouth to speak and the phone rang. He walked around the benchtop and snatched it up.