THIRTY-THREE
August walked below the shrike and didn’t cry. On the verandah she spotted Aunt Missy and Elsie inside the house packing. She spun from the back door, facing the field to smooth her hair. She held the box in one hand, and with the other she ran her fingers along the faces of the buttons, to be certain they were all fastened.
With the blunt end of a butterknife Aunt Missy was prying little rectangle gold and silver plaques from the bases of Poppy’s fishing and vegetable-garden trophies. On the table a corkboard was spread with white glue for the plaques. A box sat on the floor accepting the tens of plastic moulds of miniature cups and chalices. Poppy had spent his retirement on the upkeep of the garden and fishing at Lake Broken and along the full end of the Murrumby, the other side of the dam, two hours south. He never displayed the trophies. Aunt Missy sorted them straight from the storage box.
‘How are ya – you missed lunch?’ Aunt Missy kissed her cheek and then narrowed her eyes, sniffed at the air around her. ‘He-llo,’ she said stirring. ‘Where’ve you been, niece?’
August put her hands on her hips, nodding at the trophies. Trying to ignore her but more trying not to tremble. ‘Can I help?’
Aunt Missy started cackling then.
Elsie looked out from the doorway of the big room. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing, Nana, Aunty just farted.’ August looked at Aunt Missy as if to say shut up. Her aunty smiled back at her as if to say I won’t.
Aunt Missy lifted her chin to Elsie, ‘August thought it was a new perfume from town.’
Elsie shook her head and ducked back into the big room, mumbling under her breath.
August took Aunt Missy’s elbow gently, serious now. ‘Eddie’s family had artefacts, from here. They donated them to a museum.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Papers, he’s found submission papers or something.’ She paused and looked towards the end of the lounge room. ‘We shouldn’t say anything to Nana. She’s got enough going on.’
Aunt Missy glanced behind her, then back to August. ‘You sure they’re from the property?’
August nodded and shrugged. ‘It’s weird.’
Missy pinched her bottom lip, deep in thought, and broke from it, scrunched her face at August. ‘It’s sad.’ She looked through the back sliding door, out to the trucks in the field. ‘Where is he?’
‘At home.’
‘With his folks?’
‘Alone.’
‘What did he show you exactly?’
‘He’s got documents, like lists of donated items. Spears and stuff.’
Aunt Missy squeezed her bottom lip between her fingers again.
‘I took these,’ August added, gesturing at the small box in her hands.
‘Take it to the car, we’ll go through it.’ Aunt Missy nudged the box and August towards the back door, picked up a trophy and wandered towards the big room. As August went to the driveway she heard Aunt Missy call out to Elsie, ‘Early tea, Mum?’
Up at Southerly, Eddie’s car was gone too. August fingered through the box, sat the envelopes to the side, flicked through small pocket-sized leather books. Inside the books were larger envelopes and letters in thick yellowed parchment written in copperplate. She couldn’t understand a word. Inside the small envelopes the cards were there, the ones Eddie had read. They were written in courier typeface, The Historic Museum Australia printed in the top centre. Next to each item a call number like books at a library ran down the right-hand side.
Aunt Missy leapt off the verandah stairs, and buffeted her handbag against her shoulder as she rushed to the car. She slumped into the driver’s seat. ‘I told her we’re picking up fish and chips, so remind me.’
She turned on the ignition. ‘What’s in there?’ she nodded at the box.
‘All that stuff.’
‘We need to drive out a bit to get phone reception.’
They parked on the outskirts of town near the satellites, the afternoon light stretched onto the front windshield. August could see the shape of her aunt’s head, the round curve visible through the white-grey hair thinning at her crown. It was as if time slapped August in the face, roused her from some long sleep. Aunt Missy opened her phone, August rested her head on her shoulder and watched the screen as she typed in ‘The Historic Museum Australia’, tapped on ‘Archaeology Collections’, then ‘Aboriginal’. She scanned half a page and read aloud:
‘There are roughly 17 000 collections, some consisting of only a single object, and largely the results of the pioneers of Australian archaeology; usually untrained, curious but dedicated people keen to understand Aboriginal prehistory and salvage material evidence of the past. The first artefact entered into the current Anthropology registration system was a fishing spear from the Murrumby River region, donated to the Museum in 1896 and held in the Falstaff Permanent Collection. Some of these collections —’
The phone turned black. ‘You ever charge your phone?’ August asked.
‘No,’ Missy said, dropping the phone into her lap. ‘Dad would have loved this … it would have meant so much to him.’ She looked in the rear-vision mirror and sighed, ‘Gawd.’
‘Sorry, Aunty.’
‘If we can find the Falstaff Collection, Augie, it means maybe we can stop the mine. We have to find it.’ With her fingers she cleared the tiny black streams of mascara from her cheeks.
‘Library for the internet?’ August asked.
‘Good one,’ she said and pulled the car back onto the bitumen. ‘You know I looked for stuff, I looked for Gondiwindi stuff, our family name! For Prosperous info, our home. Lo and behold it was under Falstaff the whole time, aye?’ Aunt Missy glanced at August as she drove. ‘When’s your flight back to London?’
‘Couple of days.’
‘You really going back to England, niece?’
August looked at her hands, picked at the dry dishwashing skin flaking off and then up at the road through the windshield. ‘No.’
‘Good. You’re home now. That’s good, darling.’
There was a different woman manning the desk at the library.
Her name tag read: Julie. She let Aunt Missy charge her phone in the socket beside the computer terminal. Missy got back to the museum website, looked up the page they were on, and read aloud the end of the paragraph, ‘Some of these collections are not well documented, but collectively they reflect the rich evidence of Aboriginal past as well as the pioneering effort to save and understand it.’ In a new window she typed Falstaff + artefact + Murrumby while August approached the front desk.
‘I just wanted to tell you I’ll bring the books in soon that my grandfather borrowed. Another lady warned me yesterday about fines.’
‘No problem,’ Julie said. ‘I’ll make a note of it. What’s your grandfather’s name?’ Julie readied her hands at the keyboard.
‘Albert Gondiwindi.’
Instead of typing she dropped her hands and tilted her head in one motion. ‘Mr Gondiwindi, I’m so sorry, I heard he passed.’
August nodded, tapped the desk as if everything were cleared away.
‘Can I help you with anything while you’re here?’ She glanced to Aunt Missy busy at the terminal. ‘Are you doing research too?’
‘Yeah, maybe you can help.’ She thought about what they’d need. ‘Do you have any information about the Aboriginal Mission out at the Murrumby River from early last century?’
‘Yes, I do. Would you like to see the archive your grandfather and I went through?’
August’s heart skipped a little. ‘Yes, please,’ she said, feeling her face break into a smile.
‘We don’t have much, to be honest.’ She motioned for August to walk with her to the twin history shelves. It seemed to August that Julie knew exactly where to go. ‘This book,’ she reached up to a tattered and very thin blue hardcover without anything on the spine, ‘was the one your grandfather was most interested in, I’d say … with the research he was conducting.’
‘What exactly was he researching with you?’ August took the book into her hands. The hardcover was woven and its title was embossed, ornate brown lettering: The First Australians’ Dictionary.
‘I think he was putting together a pre-colonial history of the local area, a family history. This one,’ she placed her index finger on the book August was holding while scanning the same shelf, ‘… and another were helpful for him but I can’t see it.’
She gently took the book back and opened it, showing August the title page. ‘It was compiled posthumously, but I believe the original author ran the Mission in the late nineteenth century. It might be small—’ she turned each page carefully, there was a long introduction and then no more than twenty pages of words, listed like a dictionary, ‘but it is likely the only published record of the Mission.’ She closed the book and handed it to August. ‘Have a look at that. It can’t leave the library, though.’
‘Thank you.’ August looked at the book and turned back to Julie. ‘Do you have anything on this man, the author?’ She ran her finger along the name Ferdinand Greenleaf.
‘Actually, there’s just the one thing your grandfather ordered in. It’s a PDF file – it can’t be photocopied or printed, though.’ She looked behind her but there was nobody there. ‘I can email it to you though, would you like that?’
‘Yes please,’ August added, as Julie took out a scrap of paper. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a serialised letter, I think just a few pages.’ She handed August the paper and pen from her blouse pocket. ‘Write your email,’ she said with a little urgency, anxious to return to work.
‘Thanks. What is a serialised letter?’
‘It means it was once printed, in newspapers and such. And I’m so sorry for your grandfather’s passing.’ She glanced at the central desk and the person waiting there to be served. ‘Let me know if there’s anything else.’ She smiled sympathetically and returned to her post. August took the book to the computer terminal and pulled a padded chair up beside Aunt Missy.
‘Look. Language book.’ She placed it gently on the corner of the booth tabletop and opened it. ‘Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf,’ August read aloud.
‘Are we in it?’
She scanned through the introduction. The type was small and difficult to read, ‘It mentions the Mission, it says Prosperous in the introduction.’ She read a small notice on the back page.
‘It is my hope that these few words safely find you. I was sent to this island of punishment, privation, and misery. I am certain I will not survive, and so I appeal to you to think on what it means to be Australian, to be citizens of a young country with boundless skies, and to consider the treatment of our fellows, no matter from which land they have arrived, and no matter of their forefather, their tribe.
In truth,
F. Greenleaf.’
‘Google this fella, Aunty.’
Missy typed but nothing came up so she returned to the Historic Museum Australia website.
August turned to her with a sigh. ‘I have to return the rental to the airport.’
‘Good,’ she said absently, looking at the bottom of the website and pulling up a street map. ‘Reckon we should drive it to the airport tomorrow. We can visit the museum, drop your rental off and get the train back.’ A huge grin spread above her chin. The pair of them must have looked mad, the way they were smiling at each other in the silent library, holding back a whoop. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely!’ August whispered, the two of them containing their giggles. Aunt Missy unplugged her phone and August rested the book at the library desk where Julie stood behind. She was on the phone but acknowledged August again, nodded and smiled.
August grabbed her aunt’s arm. ‘Dinner?’
‘Thanks, Bub,’ she said, and hooked her arm into August’s as they walked, clutched together up High Street. August looked at the shopfront where a lovable Pixar character smiled from the sandwich board of Nemo’s Fish and Chip Shop.
Aunt Missy turned to August holding her purse out pointedly. ‘Best barramundi in Australia!’
‘Don’t the kids get it, that they’re eating Nemo, not having a playdate?’
Aunt Missy turned and whispered in August’s ear, ‘Shut up.’ She was giggling as they joined the eager line of customers.
‘Oops!’ She held August on her outer arms, and moved her in the queue. ‘Hold our spot, cash only, back in a tick.’
August stood in the heavy, greasy air while Aunt Missy ran to the ATM. Directly in front of August in the queue was a severely sunburnt man, probably around her own age, she thought. He was wearing a t-shirt roughly cut off where sleeves once were; it hung loosely on his strawberry-milk shoulders. A tattoo covered his entire shoulder – a huge constellation of the Southern Cross. He glanced back at August for a second before placing his order. August stared at his tattoo: those stars that led them astray at night, all the trouble Eddie and Joey and her had got into when they were teenagers, when they were bored out of their minds, when the silence became so deafening it burst their eardrums. August was daydreaming looking at his inked skin.
The man turned back again. ‘You like that?’ he asked her, pointing to it, without waiting for an answer. ‘That’s the Southern Cross, lady. That means you don’t belong here.’
She stood there dumbfounded, blank-faced. After a moment she wondered who he thought she was, or who exactly he thought he was.
Aunt Missy reappeared, though August decided not to tell her about the tattooed man – they were having too much of a nice time together.
‘Three pieces of crumbed barramundi, large hot chips, large tabouli salad, please,’ Aunty said, and then looked at August. ‘You eating? Want a Chiko Roll?’
She thought about it, her mouth salivated and she nodded. She was, for the first time in a long time, ravenous.
Elsie, Missy and August ate dinner on the rear verandah. They heard someone knock on the front door that was never used. Missy got up and yelled around the side of the house, ‘Aroundthaback!’
‘Do you have to yell?’ Elsie asked, speaking with a mouthful of food.
‘Barramundi’ll go cold if I walked around there dragging my fork.’
A woman in a ranger’s uniform appeared at the side of the house with a clipboard and a fake smile. Missy nudged August.
‘Evening, ladies!’ the stranger said, too enthusiastic. ‘Hope I’m not interrupting dinner?’
Nana stood up, wiping her mouth and fingers on the paper napkin. ‘No, no,’ she assured her.
‘I’m Karen, just here from Rinepalm Mining head office to see how the transition is going for next week.’ She rested one foot on the verandah stoop, and propped a forearm on her knee like she was about to launch into a story.
‘Almost packed,’ Nana said.
‘Okay, well you just let us know if you need anything, anything at all.’
She was staring at the sign above her nana, which had been there since August could remember. It read: Best friends use the back door.
‘Oh, I love your sign,’ the lady said. ‘I’ll remember for next time.’
‘But you’re not our best friend, Karen,’ blurted Missy.
Elsie swiftly turned and whacked her shoulder with the back of her hand. ‘Missy!’
The lady laughed it off. ‘Anyway, I like that sign …’ she said confidently, Aunt Missy’s insult rolling off her back as she walked away.
Missy jumped up and grabbed the plaque from the nail, held it out to her. ‘Why don’t you take it?’ she said, sweet as pie. ‘Go on,’ she insisted, holding it over the verandah rail.
August watched wide-eyed, popped a hot chip into her mouth like it was popcorn.
The woman hesitated. ‘Couldn’t possibly,’ she said, waving it away and retreating to her SUV at the driveway mouth. ‘Goodnight, ladies,’ Karen added, waving the women away, too.
Missy cocked her arm and threw the thing in the dirt behind the woman, her voice raised to a yell. ‘’Cos where the hell are we gunna put it!?’
They heard the car drive off and Elsie shook her head and yelled at Missy. ‘I like that sign, don’t give it away or bloody throw it!’
She whacked her daughter again with her napkin.
‘Mum, it’s a bit dirty, anyway. Everyone laughs at it. Back door?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘It’s junk.’
‘It’s priceless.’
‘Mum, I got it from the Mother’s Day stall at school for maybe twenty cents.’ Missy walked down and retrieved the sign, mock-dusting it off. ‘Where you going to put it anyway, no back doors in apartments.’
‘Shush now.’ Elsie said and snatched it from her. She was smiling out the corners of her mouth, she looked at it in her hands and then decided, ‘Albert hated it too.’ She giggled and tossed the thing over the verandah, back onto the dirt.
The three of them broke from a giggle to belly laughs. August felt there, felt effortlessly at home, felt as if a vibration were being shared between the three generations of women. Felt as if she might laugh that way, on Prosperous, after everything, after death and theft and secrets and lies and the muddied water, and the diesel and the blood – after all that – she felt as if she was home. Belonged.
Their eyes were glazed with laughter when August dropped her hand on Nana’s. ‘I’m not leaving.’
Nana caught her breath, smiling still. ‘Not running off again?’
‘Nup,’ August promised. ‘Promise.’
Nana dropped her other hand atop August’s and squeezed it, looked out into the field. ‘Good,’ she said, and looked back at her. ‘What about the car?’
‘Taking a little trip tomorrow,’ Missy said.
‘Where?’ Elsie asked.
‘Just returning Augie’s car to the airport. We’ll get the train back, Mum.’
Elsie smiled. ‘Drive safe, then!’ she addressed August sternly. ‘And get your money back on that ticket.’
August nodded but doubted she’d be able to.
‘You wanna come, Mum?’ Missy asked.
‘To the city?’
‘To the city! You could visit some old friends.’
‘All my old friends are dead, girls. Now help me before you leave.’
They cleared the dinner plates and began washing up. Another knock came on the front door.
Elsie shot Missy a dirty look. ‘Cops! Look what you’ve done – Rinepalm gubba’s called the bullymen!’
August walked to the seized wood of the front door, and called out, ‘Who is it?’
‘Alena.’
‘Go around the back.’
‘It’s my friend, okay?’ August explained as she grabbed her hoodie from the kitchen bench. ‘Back in a tick. Save me some dessert?’
‘There’s no dessert,’ Aunt Missy yelled, as August jumped off the verandah.
Eddie’s car was still absent and Southerly windows stayed dim as the sun dropped.
Alena was holding a tray covered in foil and smiled when she saw August, gestured back to the road with her chin. ‘Hey, gotta run – hubby’s in the car.’
‘No worries, what is this?’ August said, and walked alongside Alena back to the road. ‘Lamingtons. Aussie food for ya!’ She nudged August and passed her the tray. Alena’s car was parked at the letterboxes, beyond the property line. She seemed jittery as they reached the peppermint trees. She wrapped her hand around August’s forearm, dipping her head to peer through the trees onto the road.
She lowered her voice. ‘Listen, he won’t let me give you the school stuff.’
‘Why?’ August whispered back, noticing then how little Alena had changed since school, how she had flipped from giggly to cautious, and how she still looked much the same, in spite of being pregnant and the faint lines on her face.
‘I don’t know, he doesn’t want any trouble with the mining people is all.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Alena – it’s not going to stop anything, you know?’
‘I know, I just wanted to show you. Anyway, cake is alright instead?’
‘Yeah, thanks heaps for this.’ August said, as they approached the Mercedes minivan. Through the back-seat window she could see a small child strapped in rolling a Matchbox car over his bare knee. James Gaddon, whom August recognised, was leaning out the driver’s-side window. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
‘Fine.’
‘You back in town for long?’
‘Maybe,’ August said. ‘Maybe not.’
‘Keep the tray,’ Alena said, and kissed her on the cheek and walked to the passenger-side door.
James looked at August with an easy contempt. ‘I’d go with the later one. You’re a blow-in in this town anyway, so don’t stick your nose in shit where it don’t belong.’
August saw Alena jump in the car and slap James across the arm. ‘Yessir,’ August said, and mock-saluted him. He started the car and she gave him the finger as they drove off.
She looked up at Kengal. She couldn’t see anybody, but it appeared as if there were more tents up there: little angled tops, stegosaurus bones. She took the lamingtons inside.
‘I got dessert!’ August yelled to her nana and Aunt Missy washing dishes at the sink.
She ripped the foil off the wonky lamingtons crammed over the cling-wrapped tray. Chocolate sauce and coconut were smeared everywhere.
‘Still edible,’ she said, and took a lamington and placed the rest on the kitchen bench. In the space left from where she’d taken the lamington she saw the word Pack in purple. ‘Covert Alena!’ August hooted, and slopped the entire tray of lamingtons onto the foil covering, then removed the cellophane.
‘Rinepalm Mining Activity Pack,’ she read, and pulled it from the cellophane, waving it.
‘What’s that for?’ Aunt Missy screwed her face up.
August looked at it. Realised it wasn’t especially informative. ‘Alena wanted to be a smuggler for a day, I guess.’ She held it limply beside her and offered to dry the dishes.
‘August, if you want to do your investigating then go into the bedroom and look through all the mining papers I’ve got in the dresser. You can have a read on the bed.’ Elsie winked at August. ‘You’re a smart cookie. You always were, Augie.’
Missy looked at her mum, ‘What about me, Mum?’
‘You’re the light relief, Missy,’ Elsie chuckled, as she stacked clean plates into the packing box.
August kicked her shoes off to go to her nana’s room.
‘No, Aug, read it in the car tomorrow. Stay, we’ve got to help pack and clean.’
Aunt Missy and August worked in a frenzy, filling and taping boxes and scrawling the contents along the sides and top of the cardboard. Elsie was impressed. She handed August the mining portfolio, as if it were pocket money.
‘Did you read it?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Lies in there, coming straight from the horse’s arse.’
Later, in the attic room, August read through it. The portfolio explained Rinepalm plans, its pages had plenty of stock photos of employed people in identical shirts. There were old letters collected within the portfolio that her nana and poppy had received about the mine proposal. There was lots of talk and promise in the words but not much depth, August felt. She sat in the single bed and took a closer look at the activity pack.
It was weird. It was stranger than the mining portfolio for adults, but she couldn’t put her finger on how. The graphics were as chaotic as a Happy Meal box. Crosswords featured words like emerald, diamond, ruby, iron, ore, silver, opal. A mole in a hard hat was the mascot. He wore a tiny orange waistcoat. There were drawings of industrial drills burrowing down into the layers of the earth, a cross-section view. In one of the layers the designers had drawn a skeleton of a stegosaurus. She counted on her fingers the other dinosaur names she could remember: brontosaurus, pterodactyl, triceratops, tyrannosaurus rex. That was all. She thought she should probably go back to school.
Inside the plastic sleeve there were glossy cardboard pieces perforated into sheets. She took the sheets aside and popped out each of the numbered pieces. She followed the instructions and made herself a little drilling rig. She placed it on the bedside table. Alena was right, it was pure propaganda – bite-size, child-size, colourful, cheery brainwashing.
She looked out through the missing shard of the Lutheran rose towards Southerly. It was dark there. Eddie had loaned Jedda and her one of his walkie-talkies when they were kids. They’d take it in turns to tell kid jokes: August remembered one of Eddie’s, a kangaroo and a rabbit are doing a poo in the bush, the kangaroo asks the rabbit if he has problems with poo sticking to his fur. The rabbit says no, so the kangaroo wipes his bum with the rabbit. August smiled at the memory resurfacing as a shore exposed at low tide, she heard Jedda’s laughter squeal in her mind. Over and out he’d say. Over and out they’d say.
After Elsie had gone to bed Missy came up to the room with the shoebox from Southerly. They went through a few of the pieces sleepily.
‘We could claim Native Title,’ Missy said, her face revisiting the idea.
‘You reckon? Joey said – no it was Aunt Nicki, or both of them – that it’d be impossible.’
‘This is the missing piece, August, these are artefacts; we’re not extinct with this. I reckon it’d stop the mine at least. Let me read the submissions to you.’
August crossed her legs on the bed and leant back into the wall.
Missy read the detailed descriptions of the artefacts aloud slowly, her voice rose a little at the end of each sentence like she was steadying, bracing against a tear. While her Aunt Missy read August tucked her legs under the covers and lay her head on the pillow. She looked up at her aunt. It was just like getting a bedtime story. She felt so happy to have her sit so close and read to her.
Missy noticed August slipping into sleep and got up and tucked the blankets in, popped the lid on the shoebox. She said she’d lock the house up and for August to pick her up in the morning from her place in the Valley. She’d bring sleeping bags and stuff. August asked dreamily for a hug and Missy held her tight and then kissed August on the forehead.
When her aunt closed the bedroom door August rolled onto her side away from the wall. She thought about the words Eddie had said: slave yard. It couldn’t be true. The cardboard purple, green and orange drilling rig cast a small shadow beside the bedside lamp. August reached out and switched off the light.
Open road, going somewhere, elsewhere – she loved that feeling. She knew that about herself. She knew she loved leaving more than a drink, more than sex, more than hunger, the books. The road didn’t have a caved-in feeling or a hangover, it could have any wonder in the whole world. But she felt different then, without wanderlust. She felt the pull like magnets to Prosperous, and the road, even with her Aunt Missy, felt ominous, strange – she wanted to be home almost as soon as they’d left.
She had ached for that thing, that feeling to want something. To feel like she had a purpose. That she was part of something. While living in England, she took trips alone some summers. She spent her spare time looking for cheap train tickets, forums where people couldn’t follow through on their plans. She’d gone to the harbour of Portsmouth, stood ahead the ache of its blue mouth, where the fleets had departed and caused it all. She wandered the streets of Bath and Oxford and London. Every place was interesting enough for a girl from Massacre Plains. Though she really saw little, the footpaths mostly, the churches, the supermarket aisles, the bakeries, the bookstores, the bars.
One place stuck. She’d planned to hitchhike to Edinburgh but only made it north of Middlesbrough. She spent a few days in the plains beyond, where she discovered Hadrian’s Wall. The wall had been built by the Romans when they were brutal conquerors or bringers of civilisation. She didn’t know. Along the wall that crossed three rivers she found a small museum at Chesters Roman Fort, and with no other visitors that day, the curator had given her a tour. She’d shown August a Vindolanda writing tablet, one of a thousand. It was two miniature slices of wood pressed together by time and discovered in a dig only decades before. When the archaeologists had opened them they found hieroglyphics inside, yet just as soon as the tablets were opened, the writing disappeared in the elements. Finally after experimenting, the inscriptions were able to be photographed under special lighting. They were cursive Latin, and the curator had told her they were still being deciphered – almost two thousand years later. And then the curator picked up a piece of ceramic that had inscriptions scraped into the clay, made before it was set as stone. She’d translated it for August, that sad-looking young woman alone in the museum at wall’s end. ‘Read, and good luck to you’. ‘Who wrote it to who?’ August asked, and the woman explained that at the time the pen was as important as the sword, that words were paramount, and that the message was made when the tile was still soft, and that it must have been a gesture from one stone worker teaching another stone worker to read. August had smiled, though she didn’t take a photo. She’d never taken photos. Looking back, she didn’t know why; it was as if everyone around her were taking the photos on her behalf in a way. She was just an observer on their vacations; she’d write a poem instead. Besides, she never did like her photo being taken.
The stone, like the North African redware, the bronze saucepan from Italy, the ivory from India, the pottery water containers, the glass bottle in the shape of a West African head, made in Germany, the curator said, or Egypt – it was all a picture, a sculpture – an incidental passage of time, there upon a shelf on the wall. A line of stones that over time had no sure beginning or end to its construction. It was evidence of the other, that it had once been a bustling sort of city in the middle of nowhere, where different cultures came together. There were Syrians, North Africans, Hungarians, Bulgarians, French, Spanish, German, all ‘serving’ the Empire, a gaggle of languages.
She had walked to a higher point overlooking the rolling green hills, where ordered rows of fencing had twisted loose. She had thought about how everywhere in that place Romans had written the local people out of their history. She was trying to figure out how people valued a thing, what made something revered while other things were overlooked. Who decided what was out with the old, what had to have a replacement? What traditions stayed and what tools, household items, art, things, evidence of someone, languages, fell away. But when she tried to draw a vague line to the artefacts of Prosperous she was stumped – why the artefacts of Middlesbrough were important and not those from home.
August didn’t tell Aunt Missy about the wall she’d seen when they stopped at the petrol station to pour the thermos coffee. August slugged the last of the water and dropped the plastic bottle into the bin.
She wandered idly back from the recycling station to her aunt, who was tapping her foot at the opened passenger door. ‘Quit ya dawdling – we haven’t got much time to stop the mine!’
‘Is that what we’re doing?’ August asked, jumping into the driver’s seat and pulling at the seatbelt.
‘I reckon we are.’
They passed roadkill, but no wildlife bounced into the path of the rental. August asked about what Poppy was like at the end, about where he thought he was going.
‘He worked in the garden right up until the end; he used to think retirement was for suckers. He always used to say, You’ve got to keep busy.’
‘I mean the afterlife?’
‘He said he wasn’t going to be a star so don’t bother craning your neck.’
‘Did he?’
Missy laughed. ‘Yeah.’
‘What else did he say?’
‘He said religion is being afraid of death, that it was made to calm the philosophers down, or something. Ah! He did say something that I liked. He said none of us should be scared to go to sleep.’ Missy was silent for a bit and then said, ‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’
‘Yep.’ August said. ‘What do you believe in?’
‘Same as Dad. We go back to the earth and become other things in nature.’
‘Did he say anything about what happens next, at the end?’
Missy took a big breath, tried to erase the lifeless image from her mind.
‘Those final stages went on for a couple of days. The soul and the mind are there, but the body can’t do anything else to be with the mind – it’s like he became split. The natural split. At that moment I didn’t want it to end, I just wanted another day, then you want another hour, another minute. It’s all precious in the end! It’s like there are never enough details left. I wanted everything back. Fingerprints, photos, every story, nights that were longer. A right time to die? To be separated? There isn’t, August. It hurts all the time, it hurts to lose someone, doesn’t it?’
August was crying. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘In the hospital in the end the nurse said something nice to me, she said she was sending me white light.’
‘White light?’
‘Think about it, Aug, it’s beautiful – it’s like the light breaking through the gums, the day reflected off the top of choppy water, all the sun’s energy in that moment. That nurse, she wanted to send me electricity, you know?’
‘Divine light,’ August said.
‘Yeah, holy light from nature, that’s beautiful.’
‘You think you’ll go to heaven, Aunty?’
‘Nah! I’ll be back as a tree or something that doesn’t move. I just want to chill out and not have to go hunting for food, you know?’
Later August stopped for Missy to take over the driving for the last three hundred kilometres. August returned to reading the cards aloud. ‘Wooden shovel, used for digging earth mounds.’
‘Can you believe it?’ Missy said. ‘Our ancestors! Take my phone, check and see if there’s that thing from the library lady.’
August opened up her email on Missy’s charged phone, there was an attachment from a council address. In the body of the email Julie had typed: I hope all is well. I had a look at it again, it’s Reverend Greenleaf ’s letter to the organisers of the World’s Fair in Chicago. If you need anything else, I’m more than happy to help.
‘You want me to read the letter aloud?’
‘Go on.’
‘It’s old, Aunty, I’ll get the accent all wrong.’
‘I’ll bet fifty bucks you won’t.’
When August reached the end of the letter, Missy had to pull over. She walked out on the rest area holding her stomach like she was going to vomit. She was breathing deep, walking in little circles. ‘Our people!’ she said, but in a different way. Hurled the words out of her body, like the backlash of an axe caught in the timber knot of their family tree.
August imagined the Reverend out in their field, in their home. She couldn’t believe that he lived out there, that he made Prosperous. Imagined him trying to protect those ancestors at the same time as punishing them. August remembered reading John Milton in England, he wrote about justifying the ways of God to men. She couldn’t remember the whole idea, but it seemed in the car then, as if they had all been wronged by people justifying the ways of God and not themselves, and that the Reverend had been wrong too. Hadn’t they all been godless and free and moral once? She wondered.
‘And what do you reckon happened after? After the government ran the Mission?’
‘When it became a station?’
‘Yeah,’ August confirmed, fearful of the answer.
Missy started the car. ‘Real bad stuff, worse stuff.’
‘He was kind, you think?’
‘No. He was bad in a long pattern of bad. I reckon he just thought he was doing right.’
‘He regretted it.’
‘Yeah but, only when it happened to him too, aye. But there’s stuff in that letter, evidence of us Gondiwindi you know? Native Title evidence.’
August stared into the road ahead. ‘Yeah,’ she said.
The rest of the drive August asked Aunt Missy more about what Poppy had been like as a dad, what Jolene had been like as a sister, what Nana was like as a mum. She told August little snippets and they tried to laugh, as much as they could after reading the letter. They talked about stories of Elsie and the stories about August’s mum as a girl and they wept easily about the stories of Albert and tried not to talk about Jedda. They stopped at roadsides for candy bars and chewing gum. They listened to pop songs on the radio. The air kept coming in thick until they crossed the mountains and the temperature dropped with the cool off the ocean.
When Missy saw the water, her spirits lifted again, and she tapped the GPS screen. ‘Only a hundred kilometres left to go!’
‘We should’ve brought Joey along too,’ August said.
‘Should of, you’re right.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Tramp Jungle, I don’t know, nightclub opening in Broken. Tramp Jungle?’
‘Sounds … fun.’
‘My handbag, Aug,’ she motioned for August to open it. ‘Forgot I brought my own music!’
They listened to Missy’s burnt CD of Tracy Chapman, and when ‘Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution’ came on she wound down the window and sang her lungs out. The rushing air caught in the window and hurt August’s ears. They listened to her Greatest Hits album on repeat until the words lost their meaning.
Eight hours after they’d set out from Massacre Plains they parked at the city beach. Missy bought a lamb souvlaki wrapped in warm pita, August ordered the falafel, sour yoghurt dripped off both of their chins into the evening sand. The ocean was foreign to August, she’d wanted to know it, but not float like the bodies on the surface of the water, she imagined herself instead going deep down into the part of the ocean where no light gets in. Where the fish look like aliens, glow in the dark, sharp milk teeth.
After they ate and the car park became deserted and dark, they brushed their teeth out the swung-open doors and spat onto the bitumen. They rolled back their seats and slid their legs into the hollows of sleeping bags and looked for stars that they couldn’t find.