Dirt Music

  The tillerman points out something on the beach. They’re looking at the remnants of the lightning-struck tree. Fox sees the guide’s face again, just a fleshy dab. It looks his way so long that Fox’s skin begins to creep. He senses the guide searching the bush for something. For him. And he knows that his island camp is history.

  While their wake still fans back toward the other end of the gulf Fox begins to gather his modest belongings. He leaves the heavy skillet and the stick figures and favourite shells, breaks the shelter and smoking rack and throws them off the ledge into the trees below. He packs every compartment and crevice of his kayak and with all the water he can carry paddles north.

  THE MOON WAXES and wanes and takes a whole cycle of tides with it and for much of that time Fox feels disoriented. The midden camp is a good one but he misses the drama of the island, the lush patches of vegetation, the glorious bluffs of the red mesa, the panorama from the ledge and the company of the sharks. The seaplane comes and goes every seven days or so and though he only sees it those rare times when it wanders north of its track he’s forced to stay tight to the mainland coast for fear of being seen. He paddles in the shade of mangroves and rarely walks on open ground beyond the shell pad of the camp.

  The new spot has its compensations, though. He finds that on high neaps the shallows out front of the midden are clear enough to swim in. Anything big and toothy will be visible at a good distance so he has the impossible luxury of lying fully immersed with his face in the water. With the passing of the Wet the sea has lost its bloodlike heat and he often lies there just to feel the cool passage of water across his ravaged skin. He lies face down with his eyes open to see the sleep-waves of the sandy bottom. He watches the shadow of his own head as it travels across the white sand in its aura of radiating ripples. He holds his breath, sees himself winged, fluid, twice the size he feels.

  Without rod and reel he catches most of his fish with the thrownet. On the incoming tide, mullet and whiting come foraging in shoals across the flats while he stands stone-still in the shallows, staring into the glare, ready for a shot. It’s murder on the eyes and an ordeal of patience, but he gets by. Some days he stalks the shallows with a sharpened stick to spear shovelnose rays. It’s all lesser fare and harder work. But he has water, a tiny steady stream in which he bathes his sores and his raw eyes, and he drinks his fill.

  He likes the slender boabs beside the midden. After sundown their skins are still warm against his cheek. In the evenings he keeps a smoky mangrove-wood fire to ward off the worst of the mosquitoes and he sets up another drone in the plum-like tree beside the rock shelter. Out of restlessness he goes back to singing. It consoles him, takes his mind off the feeling that he’s confined here now, almost a captive. From the midden the archipelago looks like a floating boom, a chain corralling him against the mainland.

  His first efforts at reprising the nylon string are disheartening. His thumb hurts and the tone is flat and dreary, without nuance. It’s noise but not music; it’s worse than silence. And yet crows do their monkish improv all day beyond the ridge and the creek tinkles a layered monotone and the first baler shell you find after the spring tide kicks you into action with its endless whorrrrrrr against your ear.

  He bangs away until he finds a sound. An E, he thinks, but it’s only a guess. Gets himself a four-four beat with a bit of shellgrit foot-stomp for colour and suddenly there’s a groove, a little room in there for feeling. Boom-boom-boom-boom. It’s the righteous one-chord boogie of Mister John Lee Hooker. It’s Long John Baldry. It’s Elmore James and Sleepy John Estes. It’s a jaw harp whanging down the tree into the sandstone just begging for bottleneck and banjo. Okay not bluegrass but browngrass at least and the rest of you has to sing to it; there’s just no way you can’t. Makes you laugh, dammit. Gets your teeth buzzing. Boom-booma-boom-boo! Just one note. One, one, one, one. Yes Bill. You Bill. One command. One joy. One desire. One curse. One weight. One measure. One King. One God. One Law. One, one, one, one—you go up and down your note like a pup up and down a dune until you don’t feel your festering bites or your oozy eyes or sun-scoured neck, until you’re not one moment empty, nor one bit lost or one breath scared. You’re so damn far into ones you’re not one anything. You’re a resonating multiplication. You’re a crowd. You’re the stones at Georgie’s back and the olives shaken to the dirt at her feet. All the hot sweet night you’re the hairs on the back of her arm.

  eight

  ON THE FLIGHT NORTH to Broome and for two days thereafter Jim and Georgie barely spoke. Jim slept all the first night and half the next day before leaving her in the palm-shaded bungalow while he drove into town to see family. Georgie sat, listless and heat-stunned, by the resort pool while on sun-lounges all around her, fellow guests tinkered with laptops and spoke into cell phones. Everyone wore strange hybrid clothing, the sort of tense holiday get-ups that her sisters called Smart Casual. Lots of pastels, plenty of pasty urban flesh on show. She walked down through coconut palms to the beach where red soil faded into white sand. The water was opaque, turquoise. There was no wind. Down here it was all camel rides and thong swimwear. White boys and girls played didgeridoos. Someone in orange shorts dangled from a parachute towed by a speedboat.

  Georgie felt bewildered by the crowds and the sudden change of climate. She still smarted from the leavetaking and the knowledge that the boys held her responsible for their banishment to boarding school. And she was confused within herself about being here. One moment she was suspicious of Jim and berating herself for her stupidity in having agreed to come and seconds later she was scanning faces, expecting any moment to see Luther Fox walk blue-eyed and bare-chested through the crowd. In her day-pack she had a handful of his pirate tapes and when she climbed into the town bus between some Americans in Birkenstocks and a woman who looked Aboriginal-Japanese, she pulled on her Walkman to blot out the possibility of conversation. Mandolin, guitar. John Hiatt’s strangled voice. Songs about drinking and car wrecks and ruined love. She turned it off and tried not to smile back at the Americans.

  Georgie had always liked Broome. Didn’t everybody, deep down, want a louvred house with a mango tree in the yard? When she was nineteen she’d taken the hell trip up here by bus. In those days hippies and backpackers slept on Cable Beach and the locals all seemed to be delightfully hyphenated. Everybody you met was half-something-or-other. It was like Queensland without the white-shoe brigade. To Georgie it was the tropical dream town. She supposed it was still a nice place to live, but even since her last visit four years ago when she and Tyler Hampton anchored inside Gantheaume Point the place had taken on an air of self-parody. There were so many palm trees, so many brand-new old-timey corrugated-iron shopfronts. In the town centre Landcruisers were still angle-parked and she didn’t imagine you’d ever see the park without its bandaged drunks. But the building was as frenetic as the tourism. Out on the red dirt, shopping malls and carparks and subdivisions had gone up. It was becoming a suburban outpost with a hokey pearl-diving theme.

  For fifteen minutes she trod the two or three dusty commercial streets like a sleepwalker. She didn’t know what it was—the heat, the disappointment, the lack of purpose—but she felt sapped. She went back to the resort and turned on the airconditioning and lay in the bungalow till sunset.

  By the end of that day Georgie knew that Luther Fox wasn’t in Broome. He wouldn’t be. He might have been here before Christmas but he was long gone. He could be anywhere across the north by now. It was hopeless. She’d fly back south tomorrow; this was stupid. And she needed a drink.

  When she got to the pool she pulled up at the sight of Jim with two old men at the bar. Their faces flickered in the light of tikitorches. They were faces ruined by sun and drink. Each wore elastic-waisted shorts that clung to his hips below a beer belly. They were shirtless and wore rubber thongs on their feet. Amidst all the resort wear they were a jarring sight.

  Jim saw her, hesitated, and waved her over.

  Georgie, he murmured.
This is Tiny and Merv. My cousins.

  Her surprise must have been all across her face.

  His dad was married twice, said Merv.

  Pleased to meet you.

  They smiled and looked into their beers. Their hair was silver and Brylcreemed. They were brothers. They seemed stricken with embarrassment at her presence.

  A mate of Tiny’s is a pilot, said Jim. I’ll tell you all about it at dinner.

  Georgie gathered that this was a dismissal. She bade them goodbye and walked through the scented gardens to the restaurant. She’d only had the one glass when Jim arrived.

  Your cousins are older than my parents, she said as he sat down.

  We’re leaving, he said.

  But I haven’t eaten.

  Leaving town. We’re going to Kununurra in the morning.

  Oh, she said looking along the verandah hung with bougainvillea, where romantic dinners were under way. Well, I’d pretty much decided to call it quits and fly south.

  We know where he is.

  Jim, you realize how much country there is out there?

  He pulled a map from his shirt pocket and unfolded it on the table. Georgie looked at the airstrip beside his fingertip and the coastline below it. Her heart jumped. She looked up at him. He seemed genuinely excited.

  There’s a lot of country, Georgie, and not many people. When somebody passes through people notice. Someone flew him here during the Wet. Before Christmas. A good description. Plus, he used my name. The dense prick.

  Georgie considered the map, the spill of topographical contours into Coronation Gulf. She felt an absurd thrill of pleasure at the idea that Luther Fox should remember, that he’d paid attention to her whimsical memories of the island. Few places were as remote and as difficult to reach. It hardly seemed possible that anyone would go to all that trouble simply in order to be found. Unless, consciously or not, there was someone in particular you wanted to be found by. The idea was mad but it wouldn’t leave her.

  There’s a floatplane outfit in Kununurra, said Jim. A couple of their pilots have been talking about seeing someone up here around this little chain of islands. People have been treating it as a bit of a joke. I’ve booked a charter out there. Tomorrow.

  Ah.

  A waiter finally came and took their orders. The air smelled of citronella. Georgie filled her wineglass with water.

  What? said Jim.

  She shrugged. Christ, she didn’t know what to think.

  Just sudden, she said.

  You look panicked.

  I spose I am, she admitted, feeling the energy and confidence of the past week ebb from her.

  They sat in a stranded silence until their food arrived. Both had ordered barramundi and the single fish arrived whole. It lay between them, steamed on a bed of shoots and lemon grass. Its skin still looked metallic. The eye was opaque.

  I want to catch one of these babies, said Jim with a sad stab at lightening the mood. A fifty-pounder. I’d like to see it jump.

  You know, murmured Georgie, it suddenly strikes me that you and Lu Fox have a lot in common.

  Jim put down his fork.

  I mean, she said, you both lost your mothers when you were young. People view you both through some weird lens of luck. Very differently of course. And you live…well, in the wake of some kind of disaster.

  What is this? said Jim with a quiet fury. Some high school essay you’re writing?

  What is it with you and them, Jim?

  Curlicues of steam rose from the fish between them. Jim drank off his glass of sauvignon blanc and poured himself another.

  My mother killed herself. There’s nothing at all in common.

  But I never knew that! Georgie cried. Christ, in three years you’d think I’d find out basic things like that. That and the fact that you have cousins on the old-age pension.

  We never went that deep, Georgie, he said, looking as though he regretted it immediately.

  And why was that?

  Jim drank half his glassful and tried to recompose himself. He had that earnest look from the night out on the terrace, a nakedly searching intensity that was unsettling.

  To be fair, he said carefully, you were never very curious. And that suited me because I wanted to be left alone. I’ve always, always kept things to myself. Still, there were a few times when I got close to…well, not spilling my guts so much as…well, saying a few things. About Debbie and how things were. The good ole days. But I always held back.

  Because of something about me? Georgie asked, wondering whether she really wanted to know.

  Most of it I hadn’t even said to Debbie.

  And you loved her.

  Well.

  It’s all right, she said.

  Always liked you, Georgie. But I just didn’t have room, you know? I was never really there, not present.

  Still, said Georgie without managing to suppress her bitterness, the way you describe us we were a perfect match. One mute, the other deaf.

  Jim stuck his fork into the fish and the bright foil of its skin seemed to slip.

  Look, I never went after you, Georgie. On Lombok I didn’t even see you, even after we met, wouldn’t have even noticed you if you hadn’t come bounding up to play with the kids on the beach like that.

  You made love to me, she said with what breath she could muster. The second day.

  Yes, he said, peeling white flakes of meat from the fish’s shoulder.

  I guess you needed something.

  He nodded. But I didn’t beg you to come to White Point.

  You asked me.

  I was being polite.

  You’re saying I attached myself to you like some opportunistic infection?

  No. Jesus, we just felt sorry for each other. I helped you get home. You were stuck even when you did. And me, well you pitied me.

  I wanted to help, she said. I thought I helped.

  You did. I don’t regret that part of it. Hell, I was cooked inside, totally stuck. The kids were cute. Nice big house on the water. You were unemployed, recovering from your American and the voyage. There we all were.

  Did you think I was after your money? Georgie asked, feeling the tears come.

  Don’t be silly.

  God, you must have been appalled when I showed up in town with my backpack.

  Jim filled his plate with fish and meticulously picked out the roasted flecks of chilli.

  Well, he admitted. It didn’t look good. But I couldn’t turn you away. You’d been kind to us—

  And I was good in bed.

  And I was lonely and trying to fix myself up so I decided I didn’t care what they thought. That was part of what I’d decided I had to change. This idea people had of me, the way they saw me.

  Georgie watched him carefully. That grave, almost frightened intensity had overtaken him again. It fascinated her. She had an inkling that just beyond this point was the secret place where he really lived.

  Do you mean, she asked, their image of you as their talisman, the lucky one, the Golden Boy?

  No, he said impatiently, not that. Not just that.

  And how is our meal? said their waiter, a svelte young woman with a stud in her navel.

  Dead, said Jim pointing at the fish. You want me to check?

  They finished eating in silence and Georgie watched Jim’s face as he chewed and drank in complete withdrawal. She couldn’t tell if he was summoning some kind of will to go on or if he’d shut up shop for the night.

  They walked for a while after dinner on the broad, dimpled beach. A yellow moon hung over the resort and the scrub country beyond it.

  Miles down the beach a light shone on Gantheaume Point. The air was warm. Jim walked beside her with his shirt open. She couldn’t really see his face despite the moonlight, but after a while she decided to press him.

  Are you talking about the family reputation? she asked. Is that what you meant? About changing.

  Yeah, he said, sounding almost relieved.

  Why bother
trying to change that? Small towns, legends spring up. It’s usually bullshit.

  Well, in our case it wasn’t all bullshit.

  Your father?

  The war fucked him up. Before he met my mother he had a son from a previous marriage. This is the Second World War I’m talking about. I guess that makes this boy my half-brother. He was a prisoner of the Japanese. Tortured to death. Think that’s what turned the old man, made him so hard—he never got over it. By the time I came along that was all I knew, this scary, vicious bastard. That’s what they miss in White Point. This prick I hated. I couldn’t even tell you the things he did.

  And your mother?

  Well, you can imagine why she did it. He was a monster.

  But this legend, this reputation you have to live under—

  Jesus, sometimes I can feel him in me like some kind of poison. You can feel it’s passed on—

  Oh, Jim, you can’t say that.

  And you don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.

  Georgie walked for a while, angry, chastened, fascinated.

  Beaver thinks you’ve got religion, she said at last.

  That right? he said dully.

  You were frightened of being like your father?

  I was like my father—that’s the point, he said exasperated. And Beaver knows it. The fucking good old days. I wasn’t a nice man. I was a spoiled, wild kid, untouchable because of the old man’s power. I could do anything I wanted in that town, and don’t think I didn’t try. That’s how I grew up. That’s how I was. No bloody grammar school was gonna polish that off. What else does Beaver have to say?

  He won’t say anything, said Georgie.

  Can’t tell if he’s loyal or scared.

  He saw something, didn’t he?

  I imagine he saw plenty. But…yeah, he saw me…out of control.