IT BEGAN INNOCUOUSLY ENOUGH: a muffled thump from above, a puff of dust, an echo recoiling out over the plains.
We jumped up in time to see the skull-shaped boulder—the one Jet had been sitting on the first time I laid eyes on her—come tumbling down the slope. It gathered momentum, took to the air in a ballistic trajectory, slammed into the back of the shack.
We stood there, stunned.
There was a faint shudder in the fault line that ran across the bottom of the overhang, then it suddenly seemed the crest of the hill was reconfiguring itself, mid-air.
Jet spat some words. From the tone, a rough translation might have been ‘Holy fuck!’
I set off running.
She was a better judge of landslides than me: she was Tibetan, after all. I felt her grab my arm.
‘No!’ she screamed.
She began to run towards the approaching rock storm. A black boulder was leading the charge, advancing in mighty leaps and bounds. One of the leaps took it over our heads.
Had Jet taken leave of her senses?
Then I realised she was weaving her way to the only conceivable shelter we had time to reach: Doc’s iron carport.
We dived inside, rolled into the lee of the Cruiser, clutched each other in terror as the full force of the barrage struck with a roar to wake the dead. It smashed into the roof, bombarded walls and beams, scythed out over the ground I’d have been caught cold on if she hadn’t drawn me here.
The building shuddered and shook—and seemed to hold.
The roar died down almost as quickly as it had come.
I peered out through a blanket of blinding dust. ‘Is it over?’
‘Maybe.’
She lay beside me, her face aglitter with crushed mica, her sharp nose dusty.
Suddenly she leaned forward, kissed me.
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’
She smiled. ‘A celebration.’
‘Of…?’
‘Survival.’
We climbed out from under Cockburn’s car. I was relieved to see that it hadn’t sustained any further damage. I looked up at the groaning roof.
‘Is that going to hold?’
She followed my gaze. ‘Maybe…’
A trickle of dust fell into her face.
‘Maybe not.’ She dived out into the open air.
Just as I followed suit the centre post snapped and a mass of jumbled rocks and blocks fell through the roof and crushed the vehicle.
We picked ourselves out of the dirt, dusted off, gazed at the chaos, dismayed: cabin and carport were gone, reduced to rubble. We were pretty well reduced to rubble ourselves. Doc’s rock formation had disappeared, Jet’s sculpture along with it, buried under god knows how many tons of rock—as we would have been, if not for our solid steel carapace.
The mob from the pub—June, Sandy the barman, a few early customers—came running over to lend a hand. Noel Redman, not so big on the hand-lending thing, lagged suspiciously behind.
‘Are you all right?’ asked June.
‘We’re fine,’ I replied. ‘Bloody lucky,’ I added, nodding at the obliterated buildings.
But we weren’t all fine, and we hadn’t all been lucky. The publican, poking about the wreckage, emerged with the body of his dog, whose yapping days were done. Stiff no more—well, maybe for a wee bit more; then it would be all wriggling worms for Stiffy.
Redman shot a hostile glare in my direction, went off to bury his little mate.
Don’t blame me, I said to myself. I didn’t squash the mongrel; and it would have been justifiable canicide if I had.
June took us over to the pub, administered heavy doses of hot tea and cold beer—the outback panacea—each of which I willingly accepted. Jet opted for the packet of tea she kept in the Transit van, brewed up, joined me on the veranda. She sat and stared at the carnage of the cabin, her gaze growing sharper by the second.
‘Cunt-faced fucking dingoes,’ she said at last.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Nice to see you picking up the vernacular. Who are you talking about?’
She hawked, spat viciously.
‘They change their faces and colours from time to time, rearrange the disguise, but underneath, they are the same, no?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You heard it?’
‘Ye-es,’ I replied, reluctant to admit, even to myself, what I’d heard: the muffled explosion before the rock fall.
I sighed quietly.
Why was everything so complicated?
Landslides happen all the time in this steep, rocky country; they’re a natural phenomenon.
This one wasn’t.
I took a look at the car park: I hadn’t noticed any red-bearded bastard who looked like he’d answer to the name ‘Blent’ among our rescuers, but the Pig’s Head had disappeared.
‘Sound like you’re speaking from personal experience there, Jet.’
She took a noisy swig of tea, stared ahead, glowering.
‘Met a few dingoes in your time?’
She said nothing.
‘Jet?’
I gave up, rolled a smoke. She seemed mesmerised by the movement of my fingers, the tobacco twist, the crackling paper.
‘Dirty custom,’ she commented.
‘This from a woman who works with mud?’
‘My father habit as well.’
‘Mud?’
‘Smoke.’
‘I see.’
‘My father is quiet man, you understand? Peace.’ The words came out of her slowly. ‘Carpenter in a fox-fur hat.’
Was I about to get some blood out of the stone?
‘Work with hands: the long saw, the strip of wood. Doesn’t want nun for daughter—but accept. Artist less. But accept. After nunnery, I go home, work in family house—by lake near city. Lake of souls, you know?’
‘Souls?’
‘You should understand. Lake is…voice of deity.’
‘Sort of a sacred site?’
‘Perhaps. In my country, like yours, many such place. But also army, riding in hard cars and carrying guns. Bring their weapons and poisons: test bombs, radiation, rubbish. Chinese.’ She leaned forward, hawked and spat again, across the railing. ‘Invisible sickness and death spread through lake to fish, then to the hunters of fish; nuns protest. Governor—Mister Xing—answer with gun: many nuns beaten, or jail, or run away.’
An acid smile cut into the contours of her face.
‘In city square statue of Chairman Mao Zedong; symbol of harmony between our great peoples. One night I ride into town, carry my tools. In morning, crowds gather and laugh so hard they split the sides: chairman’s arse transform to face of Governor Xing.’
She stared into her teacup, savouring the memory. ‘I watch from the hills, hiding, no find. But they recognise my hand, I am known. So my father they take to labour camp. In one month, is dead. Two months, mother as well. From the grief—perhaps from shame for troublesome daughter.’
I stared at her. Didn’t know what to say.
‘I take horse and chupa, ride off into the wind. Cross plains. Mountains. Travel in truck, bus, whatever; walk through snow to my breast. Move with deadness in my heart, with pictures and memories burning in my brain. Make way across Tibet, Nepal. With time—here.’
I looked out at the wreckage of the cabin. In its broken walls and beams I saw an echo of the story I’d just been told.
‘I see.’
She nodded to herself, studied the western plains, sniffed suspiciously. ‘There seems to be no army here…’
‘We’re not very big on armies.’
‘Public security?’
‘Just me.’
‘Puh!’ She wasn’t impressed. ‘Atomic bomb?’
‘Not lately. Few back in the fifties.’
She swirled her tea, stared into it.
‘You have something,’ she growled. ‘Something they want.’
‘They?’
‘The dingoes.’ She threw away the dregs, rose to her feet. ‘Beware.’
She stomped across to the wreckage. I trailed after.
She picked her way back into the shack, salvaged her boots and a set of chisels from the rubble. Fossicked around some more, dragged aside a pulverised table, came across a dust-covered folio. She brushed and blew away the debris, found a few of her sketches, lined them up against the rocks. Scrutinised them with a fierce eye.
Then she began picking up pieces of rubble, examining them, fitting them together, laying them out in front of the shack.
‘What are you doing, Jet?’
She paused, a big rock in her little hands, the biceps in her skinny arms surprisingly curved: ‘I finish what I begin.’
What Doc began too, I thought.
I worked alongside her for a couple of hours, gathering up rocks and rubble, laying them out in a rough approximation of Doc’s original. Jet did the arranging, issued orders, worked quickly and efficiently.
Finally the heat drove us up onto the pub veranda. We were sitting there, feet on the railing, drinks in hand, when a police vehicle came rolling down the road, pulled up in front of us.
First Griffo emerged, then Cockburn sprang out of the driver’s seat, hands on hips, gum in mouth, customary sniff hovering about the nose. His gaze zeroed in on me.
‘Emily.’
‘Sir.’
He lowered his shades at Jet but managed to keep his suspicions to himself. ‘Got a report of a rock fall.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Road still open?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Any damage?’
‘Er…some.’
‘More specific?’ His brow furrowed; he took a step back, scanned the parking lot. ‘Where’s my car?’
‘Ah, yes—your car…’
He followed my gaze, lit on the remnants of Doc’s dwelling, among which could be glimpsed a glimmer of mangled metal, a buckled bumper, a shattered blue light.
‘Fuck me gently.’
The acting superintendent said not a word on the way back in; he didn’t have to—his radioactive ears said it all. But as we walked into the station, he leaned back at me and snapped, ‘Graveyard shift. Tomorrow. Tell her about it Griffo.’
He took a few more steps, then added, ‘And get yourself a proper bloody uniform.’