Murray drove fast. He drove like one of the young blokes, like Raphael, like a hot-rodder. His car bounced and bucked over the rocks and lumps and corrugations, its suspension yelping and moaning. Milton was with him. They were going out to get oysters because low tide was at sunset and it was already getting late.
Jasmine heard them approaching. She was walking along the track between the airport and the tip. They stopped and offered her a lift, and she leapt in as the red dust passed them and swirled back and around the vehicle.
Murray drove even more ferociously, keen to impress, and on a rocky curve the car teetered, for a moment, on two wheels. Milton raised his eyebrows. Jasmine nudged him. Murray whooped and laughed. ‘Scare you Jasmine? These women can’t take it. What do you reckon Milton?’ But he drove a little slower.
‘Good car this,’ said Milton, ‘I’d like one like this.’
At the beach they picked their way among the slippery rocks and prised off large oysters. The sun was almost setting and they slapped at the midgies and mosquitoes. Jasmine and Milton worked together, putting oysters into the tin Milton carried. Milton turned to Jasmine as they crouched together among the black rocks. ‘Hear? Listen.’
From the mangroves came small noises. Popping, clicking, sucking. Milton was solemn. ‘Djilina. In the mangroves. We’re all right, they’re shy. You be here on your own but, sittin’, sittin’ lookin’ at the sun with the mangroves behind you, one of the men ones might get you, take you away. They tall, long beards and hair; sweep behind ’em, cover their footprints. The women are good, just cheeky sometimes, but they don’t take people. Old Walanguh, you know, Walanguh? He was taken by them when he was little, and they grow him up. And he has power, you know? Like magic.’
The longer they listened, the more they heard them. Regular sounds, like careful footsteps, hesitating and creeping. Milton whispered, ‘My father was out here last week, just sittin’, just sittin’ watchin’ the sun. He turned and he saw one. Him disappear again.’
Murray called out to them, his voice thin, struggling feebly to reach them through the thick light. ‘Enough?’ He held up a full bucket.
It was dusk, and, as they drove back, it was darkness. The headlights picked out the tree trunks beside the track. Among them were tall, thin, stooped beings. They were watching. The wind brushed at their long beards and hair as the car hurtled past.
Murray drove across the airstrip on the way back. ‘Shortcut,’ he said. He sped up. The headlights picked out two pairs of eyes. ‘Kangaroos,’ exclaimed Milton. ‘I had a gun, I’d get ’em!’
Murray accelerated toward them. ‘Tucker!’ he whooped. ‘Tucker time.’
They hit one on the passenger side of the ’roo bar, and Jasmine saw it large and pale in the lights, heard the thud, saw it shrinking in the darkness as it was hurled past her door window.
‘One!’ Murray the cowboy.
His mouth was a tight line, his face hard in the refection of the dashboard lights. He swung the car around, the rear drifting out in the graded gravel of the airstrip.
The other ’roo was bobbing fur, bleached in the lights, becoming larger and growing legs tail head as they sped toward it, caught it, hit it with the brakes locked up and the gravel sliding around them. It cartwheeled forward onto its small arms and the front tyre went over it.
‘Got ’em. Done.’ Murray gripped the steering wheel hard and pushed it. ‘Better than a gun,’ Milton was laughing. Jasmine held her bottom lip in her teeth. They sat in silence for a moment. A moment of a motor purring, an indicator light flashing ridiculously. A full moon and hearts beating.
Milton and Murray slung the corpses over the ’roo bar.
Next day, Milton told Liz and Annette that Murray had given the camp a feed.
‘Shit, what is he? Great white hunter?’
‘But someone’s got to look after them. The kids’ll be well fed for once anyway,’ said Annette.
Billy flew out one Friday afternoon, and arrived back on the Sunday night driving the Toyota utility he’d bought in Derby. The tray was heavily laden, and a small aluminium dinghy was strapped on top.
Some days later Billy heard a voice calling his name.
‘Hey!’ Sebastian was waving from across the school fence and walking toward him. Billy hesitated, then walked across to the fence. ‘You got outboard motor?’
Billy nodded.
‘You might say no, but can I use it, this weekend, me and my boys? We look after it, bring it back straight away, same day.’
‘Sorry Sebastian. I have to say no. Otherwise I might end up hating you if something went wrong. You understand?’
This time Sebastian nodded, but he was disappointed. Billy didn’t believe that Sebastian could guarantee who would use the motor and how they would treat it. Billy couldn’t bring himself to trust Sebastian or his boys to look after his motor.
‘You come. Your motor, my boat. We look for some turtle together, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’ Sebastian nodded vigorously. ‘Tomorrow, you pick me up at my place. I’ll wait on the road, you know, up from my place?’
Liz came with them. Sebastian’s wife, Victoria, came also. Sebastian had his harpoon, knife, a plastic container of water. Then Milton climbed in the back of the utility, and then Beatrice, and Jimmy...
‘Shit,’ said Liz, ‘how many more?’
‘Eh, Sebastian, that’s it then?’
Sebastian, Billy, Liz and Milton went in the dinghy. Victoria, Beatrice, and a disappointed Jimmy stayed on the beach.
They followed the coast, the small outboard motor working hard to push the aluminium dinghy with four adults aboard.
Milton looked at his father, then stood at the bow. He stood on the front thwart with his harpoon in hand. The harpoon was a long thin piece of wood, like a spear. It had a metal tip to which was tied a long length of strong rope.
Milton moved so that he had one foot each side of the point of the vee formed by the bow and was standing on the gunnels. His weight forced the bow down. He stood tall and surveyed the ocean around him, adjusting the balance of the harpoon in his hand as he did so.
‘Go slow, just creep.’ Sebastian repeated his statement with a gesture of his shaking hand. Billy decided to watch the hand, which also indicated the direction they were to go in. Sebastian was concentrating on the surface of the ocean around him now that he had, by reference to the ocean floor and to landmarks, found the point from which they started the hunt in earnest.
‘This bottom, see? Turtle like near this rock, crabs too, big ones, for tucker.’
They followed the coast, the great rocks standing in the deep blue sea, and the red beaches, white beaches, between them. The motor droned, the ocean lapped at the aluminium hull. The sea shifted, glinted, winked in the powerful sunlight.
‘There! See him?’ Sebastian whispered tightly. ‘That way.’
Billy steered the boat in the direction indicated by Sebastian’s pointing hand. Milton’s toes gripped the gunnels. ‘Shh. Slow.’ Billy and Liz hadn’t seen anything. There was a shape, like coral moving, a few metres before them to port. Milton went up on his toes and launched himself with the harpoon. Almost as he hit the water Sebastian sat back with a grunt. Milton surfaced, spluttering. An embarrassed grin twisted his face as he pulled himself in over the bow, almost nosediving the craft as he did so. ‘Missed him,’ said Billy, pointlessly.
They retrieved the harpoon. The tip was bent and they spent some time on the shore hammering it back into shape with a small boulder.
They continued. It was warm even on the ocean, and with the steady rhythm of the motor, soporific. Milton remained precariously balanced at the bow, and Sebastian sat in his slouched way, as if folding in on himself, but with his eyes alert and shifting. He was not shaking. He was ... was it him, humming? Billy kept an eye on the two of them for a sign, and Liz gazed into the deep, changing blues of the ocean. Here and there birds gathered where stricken bait fish were herded to the surface. The birds squawked, and fell, picking off the small fish.
Milton dived a second time and Billy saw the harpoon, saw the harpoon accelerating away from them at an angle to the surface of the water. The rope was uncoiling and springing out of the boat. Sebastian clutched at the rope, and Milton, having leapt from the water like a dolphin and become man again once in the dinghy, held it firmly, and went to haul it in. The rope went limp.
The next time Billy saw the turtle first. Its head popped from the surface, suddenly, not twenty metres to their right. Billy hissed and swung the boat slowly that way. Its face seemed to register surprise. Liz said afterwards, ‘Like ET, or an old man.’ Milton dived, and they saw the rope snaking out as if it wanted to escape them. Billy cut the motor on Sebastian’s command and watched as Milton and Sebastian held the rope, and strained. The bow swung around and pointed along the rope to the turtle. They began hauling it in.
The turtle was alongside. Billy helped, but it was too heavy to get aboard. The boat would capsize. Sebastian and Milton held it and Billy steered for a nearby beach. They went very slowly, for the dinghy was leaning heavily to the turtle’s side where the two men held it, and the gunnel was only centimetres from the water. It was difficult to retain a grip on the turtle.
With the boat supported by the sand the three men managed to haul the turtle on board. It was heavy, and its skin had an almost human texture; thicker, and more leathery to be sure, but still it felt like an old person’s skin. Billy thought he would like to taste its flesh.
Billy stuck his knife into it once or twice, around its throat, and it waved its head and legs about. ‘Kill it! Kill it properly, don’t be cruel.’ Liz yelled at them and pushed Billy. Milton and Sebastian looked bemused. Billy sawed his blunt knife across the animal’s throat a few times. Dark blood spurted, and thick tendons and veins were exposed. ‘Yes, that it, kill it,’ said Sebastian, and he rubbed his hands together.
They motored back to the beach where they had left the others. They sat very low in the water. The wind was up now, and the small wind waves broke around the bow and splashed them. Once or twice the dinghy, with so much weight at the bow, wallowed, and seemed about to dive into the depths. Milton moved as far back as he was able and they continued even more slowly.
Billy was unsure of which beach they had departed from, but he saw the black shapes of the children by the water’s edge, and then the vehicle. It took forever to reach them.
Jimmy and Beatrice ran into the shallows and grabbed the bow as they beached. Victoria ambled down from the shade of the trees behind the dunes. Billy and Sebastian dragged the turtle up the beach on its back. Its limbs continued to twitch. The children poked at it, and kicked it. Victoria smiled. ‘Big one, eh? Good one.’
‘What do you want, eat it here, on this beach, or go back to camp? You tell us, it might be too hot for you maybe. We want you to be happy.’ Sebastian asked them. They hesitated. Everyone packed up the gear. They left the dinghy upside down in the dunes.
Crossing a creek on the way back they saw a large goanna. It raised itself and raced from the creek bed. In the rear-vision mirror Billy saw Sebastian mouth one word. The goanna stopped. All those in the back of the utility began laughing and, as Billy accelerated out of the creek bed, the goanna was released into motion.
Sebastian asked them to drop him off a few kilometres before the camp. ‘We not get enough for us ourselves if we eat this one back there,’ he said. They rolled the turtle off the back of the ute and it fell where the fire would be. Milton pursed his lips and held two fingers out to his father. Sebastian put a cigarette between them. The two younger children stayed with Sebastian and Victoria, but Milton came back into the camp with them to tell some of the others to come out for a feed. They dropped him outside one of the huts, and he waved goodbye over his shoulder as he walked in the front entrance.
‘Could’ve said thanks, don’t you think? It wouldn’t have put him out or anything,’ said Liz. ‘Sebastian did, that’s the difference between the old ones and the young. They just take you for granted.’
‘Yeah. Shall we go back out there in a while, see how it’s going?’
‘What!’
‘Have a taste.’
‘Yuk. No! You go if you want.’
Her skin burnt, her flaming hair dry and crackling, and turtle blood spattered all over her.