THE CROWD DISPERSED SOON afterwards, and I drifted along in their company. People recognised me, laughed appreciatively at my skimpy little outfit, thought it was cool. When we came to the hospital, I couldn’t bring myself to enter those cold glass white-feller doors. I kept going, found myself wandering alongside a big woman who gazed at me with bloodshot eyes.
‘Em’ly Tempest!’
‘Rosie.’ Brambles.
‘Where you goin, my little parnparr?’ Her voice, smashed by years of abuse, was sympathetic, almost warm. I wondered if she remembered that every time we ran into one another it was in the middle of a brawl.
‘Buggered if I know, Rosie.’
We were at the Gutter Camp now, a ring of ramshackle shelters in a sea of moonlit cans and broken bottles, a huddle of shabby figures crouching at fires and sipping at pannikins—of tea, I was surprised to observe. Not a drop of liquor to be smelled. The uplifting mood of the Memo Hall must have settled upon the entire town.
Rosie peered into my smashed-up face, seemed to recognise something. A kindred spirit? ‘You lookin lost, Em. Got somewhere to sleep?’
‘Been in hospital, Rosie.’
‘Aw, you doan wanner go back there.’
‘No, don’t suppose I do.’
‘You welcome to stay here.’
Kenny Wednesday was picking away at a two-string guitar. I made a mental note to give him my own instrument first chance I got: he’d make better use of it than I ever would. Cynthia Winton was feeding a baby. The Crankshafts were snoring in three-part disharmony.
‘Appreciate that, Rosie.’
‘Why you in hospital? Some feller give you a flogging, did he?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Ah, my poor Nangali. They mostly bastards—and the bitches are worse. You gotta watch that sneaky little piece, Cindy—she keeps a butterfly knife in her bra. I tried to give you a hand the other night.’
‘Thanks for that—you saved my arse.’
She went quiet for a moment, then said, ‘I hear you been runnin round out west with that little boy of mine.’
‘Danny? Yeah, you should be proud of him. Turning into a real bush feller now. I love that boy: out there with them old people, learning lingo, singing the songs, fetchin his own food.’
Rosie cast a mournful eye about the tatterdemalion camp.
‘Yuwayi—he better off out there,’ she said, and I caught a glimpse of the woman she must have been before the booze got hold of her. The woman who’d landed Bandy, mothered Danny.
She threw a Crankshaft out of his bedroll, dragged it up close to hers, gave me tea and toast and golden syrup, watched over me.
Somewhere over near the men, I heard Kenny Wednesday humming to himself.
‘Kenny!’
‘Emmy?’
‘That song you sang at the hall. That was a beautiful song.’
‘Why thank you.’
The fire flared and cast an eerie wash across us all.
‘It was about Andulka, wasn’t it?’
‘My paparti, yuwayi.’
‘You really think he’s still wandering round out west?’
‘Oh, he’s out there.’
‘I heard he had a mountain fall on top of him.’
‘Take more than a mountain, kill a feller like that.’ He broke into a laugh of such extravagance that I couldn’t help but join in. ‘You ever meet that man?’
‘Yeah, I met him one time.’
‘Where that?’
I told him the story of my run-in with Andulka.
I was about ten or eleven at the time. My father had been doing a bit of prospecting out north-west of Majumanu, the community into which Andulka had wandered the year before.
Motor Jack’s reputation preceded him, and he was prevailed upon to take a quick look at a new grader they were having trouble with. The quick look ended up as a week’s work—the new grader was a second-hand snowplough palmed off onto the community by some enterprising salesman in Alice—and I was put into the school.
One sweltering afternoon Myrna, the teaching assistant, piled us into the back of a truck and drove out to the waterhole. I was first off the back, went galloping down the track.
I leapt over a log and came to a scrambling halt as the monstrous king brown basking there reared up and made to strike. Would have struck, if a boomerang hadn’t come whirling out of nowhere and knocked it aside.
The boomerang was closely followed by a lithe young man who whipped the snake into the air and broke its back.
He regarded me, stern faced, dour eyed, uttered a sharp reproof. Glided down to the waterhole with an equipoise I’ve remembered to this day.
Behind me I heard a sharp intake of breath: Myrna, holding back a clutch of goggle-eyed kids.
‘Who was that?’ I asked.
‘Andulka,’ she whispered.
I swallowed hard; the man from the desert had a hell of a rep round here. He could kill you with a look.
‘What he say?’
‘He bin say you not from here. You move too fast: more better you slow down, take time for the country to know you.’
I frowned after him, as embarrassed by my own foolishness as I was annoyed at his arrogance.
My only other encounter with Andulka came the very next day as Jack and I were heading back out bush. We came across a mob of young fellers pushing a reluctant panel van down the road. From the sound the motor was making—none at all—they’d be pushing all the way to Bluebush.
Jack took a look under the bonnet. I watched as he worked his way through the systems: petrol, plugs, points.
‘No spark,’ he announced.
A trio of young men peered in from the opposite side of the engine. One of them was Andulka.
When Jack found a spare plug in his toolbox and installed it, Andulka gazed at the spark flying between the points, puzzled, suspicious. Jack threw the old one away and, as we walked off, I saw Andulka pick it up. He studied it with such an intense curiosity that I couldn’t help myself.
‘Hey, Jungarayi!’
He looked up.
‘Tricky thing, a machine. Better get a wriggle on if you want to understand it, old man like you.’
Andulka gazed at me, a ribbon of brown light turning in his eyes, then broke into a grin of such candour that I couldn’t get it out of my head for days.
By the time I finished the story, the Gutter Camp had gone quiet. Either asleep or listening.
A voice cut into the silence from the direction of Kenny Wednesday’s bedroll. ‘You said it, just like that?’
‘Think so.’
‘Told him to get a wriggle on?’
‘Far as I can recall, yep.’
‘Andulka?’
‘Yes.’
A further interlude, then another voice from the Crankshaft ensemble. ‘Jeez, Em—you got bigger balls than me.’