Death Adder Dreaming

Noon: the knife-edge of day in Central Australia. A sandy riverbed, tumbled with red boulders, lay under a blue sky; sunshine warmed the tan sand, the giant boulders, the very heart of the continent itself. For this was the heart—three thousand million years old and still pumping, still guarding ancient secrets. Deep inside it, warriors' blood streaked its hidden walls, daubed when this was a gift from the veins—not meaningless murder; not the obscene spill from foreign wars, political assassinations, gangster greed.

There was no menace of that sort in this gorge, or so it seemed. Strangers rarely visited it; other gorges closer to Alice Springs were on tourist maps, but not this one. World history had not stirred one dead leaf here; this place had dreamed through momentous centuries, untouched by white civilisation, lost and forgotten by black. The red rocks glowed as if lit from within.

This was private property now, on the edge of a cattle station, but inaccessible to the cattle. Towering red quartzite cliffs rose above the sandstone riverbed. The river had wriggled for centuries through the range, escaping from God-knows-where to Nowhere-at-all, shedding each skin of water as it went, before it lay awaiting the next rains—when the red water would froth up like blood from the Aboriginal myths that also arose here. No wall of water smashed down here now, but the river was not dead, merely resting between infrequent performances. For miles downstream it was dry, a long tumble of boulders thrown like dice in the sudden flash floods of the wet seasons. But there was usually water cupped in secret places in the ranges, and some of it lay now where the river left the hills. It was a small deep pool, under the shadows of the cliffs.

This sunny midday hush, not flood, was the gorge's natural state; here in the peaceful heart of the most ancient land of all. A butcher bird sang the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth, and a blue dragonfly flicked lazily across the pool. Then suddenly it veered away. A man was crouching in the pool under a rock ledge, staring down the gorge. He looked around him and up at the cliffs. Then up at the cliffs again.

At last he slid out of the pool and stood in the shadows, a handsome man, part Aboriginal, in red briefs. Absently he flicked water from his body. He was slender, late thirties with a thin gold chain around his neck. The chain proclaimed his urban status, and yet he was at home in the Centre as nowhere else. And peculiarly at home in this bit of country until the last week or two.

Tony Grant was a lawyer. And yet he had read the lore here too and in many areas like it; each rock, each bush, each bird and animal linked in a giant cosmic wheel with man and the stars. He took off the briefs and stood naked, wringing them dry. No system of beliefs was richer than this; no fragment overlooked. Even the cliffs, he knew, were imbued with meaning, much of it sexual: over the riverbed, above the pile of his jeans and Reeboks, a poisonous snakeman had once raped a carpet-snake woman: his knee-holes and her vulva, half in shadow, were deep holes now in the rock-face. He looked at them. The white bit of him grinned faintly at the difficult angle of the deed, but the black in him did not. Stick Christ down in this gorge and he'd wilt like a lily on his cross. The power of this primitive place jolted him like electricity.

He slung the briefs over one shoulder and looked around again. He was puzzled that no-one had shown up; he'd slip away now and plan his next step—confide in Pop, even Rod. Meanwhile, Reilly was a problem; unwittingly, he'd given him another bullet to fire.

He stepped down from the rocks onto the riverbeds. Six minutes to live, but he didn't know it then. He loved—and feared—this place as it was, but its secret was going to come out now, one way or another. Minimise the hurt, blunt the edge of change—that was all he could try to do. He began crossing the riverbed; the sunshine soaked like warm oil into his body.

Back by the pool damp ferns sprouted from rock walls that the sun touched briefly each day or not at all, but out here the rays burned down on him unchecked—energy incarnate. He felt alive! Ghost gums, snowy white, clung to crevices in the exposed rock walls like timid bathers fleeing up from flood water, but two mighty river red gums stood in the riverbed itself, their mottled trunks matching the ramparts around them. He crunched across tiny yellow seed cups that prickled his feet.

He'd been wearing shoes too long, spent too many years treading the dirty marble foyers of city police courts, cement cells, Legal Aid linoleum, protecting the walking wounded of the black world in Sydney and the country towns around it. His new job in Alice was the same, but at least he had come back to his childhood: the pungent scent of the eucalypts, the shrilling cicadas, that serene blue dome sealing the Centre from the fretting anxieties of life on the fringes. Five minutes.

If it please Your Worship . . . he thought, and smiled gently again at his nakedness, and at the pompous images of the city magistrates he'd left behind. It was great to be back where he'd started, beginning to fulfil his destiny.

Four minutes. He stopped suddenly, delighted: the delicate head of a small rock-wallaby was peeping at him from behind a cluster of boulders. He watched it closely. Then he realised that three or four others were also slotted into the rocks like hidden figures in the Cole's Funny Picture Book that Pop had given him for his seventh birthday in Alice. He began moving gently towards them, but they bounded off: all black flanks, brown and grey, ancient camouflage for survival.

Three minutes. No camouflage for him. He stepped up on a flat rock-platform beneath the mythical vulva, the knee-holes below it. Bending, he fitted on the briefs, cupping his right hand under his groin as he jiggled in the ceremonial dance that some men perform to get comfortable. Then he turned to face the gorge again.

A rush of air startled him—the dark shape of a falcon striking down at a small cockatoo. He heard the thudding impact as bird hit bird, and then the cockatoo fell dead beside him—a ball of rosy feathers, like a shuttlecock dropped in a game.

He was intrigued. He turned and bent towards it. At that moment an explosion rattled through the gorge. Something smashed into his right shoulder. He fell against the rock wall.

Two minutes. He stared at the cockatoo, clutching his bloody arm, too shocked to understand. But when he looked up at the cliff in front of him, he saw a glint of sunlight, a human shape. He began to understand then. He rolled sideways to get up and another shot cracked. This one broke the bone in his right thigh.

He half-fell off the rock-platform onto his knees, got up, and began a clumsy weaving run. One minute. He was dragging one leg now, a confused, stricken animal. Blood poured over his hand and spurted from his thigh. He blundered for ten metres towards the place he had entered the gorge—not by the long route along the dry riverbed, but through a nearby rift in the cliffs. Beyond that, on a dirt track, his Moke was waiting.

He wasn't thinking too well. Before he could get to this rift, he had to scuttle across an open area where the desert clans once danced their myths. For centuries their shuffling feet had worn concentric circles into the earth as they stamped and sang—decked with feathers and ochre and with grass seeds stuck to them with dried blood from their veins. His own blood, meanwhile, was flowing fast

Ten seconds. Looking down from the cliff, the killer saw not the ceremonial ground, but a giant target. The victim was staggering across its inner circle when the third shot killed him. It shattered the back of his skull.

That was all. Nobody else appeared in the gorge. The blue dragonflies hovered over the pool, and a column of black ants bustled across the body. Now and again a feather of breeze rustled the spiky bushes; they scratched the rocks like gramophone needles releasing buried voices.

Later the rock-wallabies crept back out of their jigsaw puzzle to drink. One was bending over the pool when a piece of fallen eucalyptus bark crunched underfoot like crisp bacon. Someone was coming.

CHAPTER TWO

A few days later, three thousand kilometres east of the gorge, Tony Grant's white brother Rod was facing, not death, but the final disintegration of his former life. Cradling a mug of coffee, he stood on the crumbling verandah of the old farmhouse he'd bought, staring down the rutted track to the gate on the main road. Inside, behind him, his daughter Susie switched on her Swan Lake tape again. He glanced at his wristwatch; it was almost noon.

A car zipped past towards the town, and high above the paddocks a jet cut a long clean furrow through the sky—pointing to London, perhaps, Bangkok, Tokyo, anywhere but the United States. He felt sick already. It was nearly finished. The music danced out under the rusted galvanised iron roof, the gnarled grapevine that knelt on top of it. The tiny farmhouse was like a music box itself, with Susie visiting him here for the last time.

He slewed the dregs of his coffee from the mug and sauntered down the front steps, looking casual, concealing tension. Another car sped by pulling a rocking caravan: tourists passing through to look at the local waterfalls on the way to the coast. Well, he, was a stranger here too. And soon he'd be alone here again.

He turned abruptly, went back up the steps, and pushed open the French doors of the living room.

Watch this, Daddy!

Susie was standing by the table, a bit of torn mosquito net wrapped over her yellow shorts.

Just a sec, she said, and she switched off the tape and reversed it. That's it.

The music swelled, and his seven-year-old Pavlova, his Fonteyn, danced a final solo for him in the blue moonlight of another time, her face uplifted, proud and absorbed. He watched until she'd had enough, roughly wiping his eyes with the back of one hand.

What's the matter? she asked.

Nothing. He walked across the room and rubbed her blonde head. I love you, that's all.

I love you too, she said brightly. Automatic playback.

I'm going to miss you.

But you'll come for a holiday, won't you?

Sure, he said smoothly. Soon as I get some money.

He looked at his watch again. Not long now. There's nothing you've forgotten, is there?

Nope. Only this.

I'll just check your bag, he said. He'd checked it three times already.

Except I've got to say goodbye to the chooks.

Oh yeah. He grinned. Better not forget them.

And say hullo to the horses when you get them.

I sure will. I'll send you their photos.

A few minutes later he went to the French doors again. He looked through white lace curtains yellow with long neglect. A powder-blue Mercedes was turning in at the gate. He'd been expecting a long black car like a hearse, he realised; the image of death had been running through his mind for hours.

He turned back to Susie. I think they're here.

His ex-wife Vickie and her new husband, Steve, an American, didn't stay. They'd booked for lunch on their way back to the city, Vickie announced briskly to the air around him. They were running late.

Rod bent at a back window. Look after yourself, he told Susie.

In the front, Vickie stared ahead, silent and intent. She bristled whenever he was near her; her hostility was almost palpable.

He recalled her secret word for sex, winkies, as in: No winkies tonight. She was very suburban, Vickie; she loved an ordered life. She had nearly finished her hairdressing course when they married; she played tennis with her girlfriends and had a Pap test every birthday.

And now she was off: she didn't have to be nice to him any more. He'd given his consent to Susie leaving.

It was Steve who half-turned in the silence to reassure him. She'll be fine, he said.

He seems OK, Rod thought; an easy, comfortable manner.

Send me a letter, he told Susie in a strong even tone, but he was really directing this at Vickie. Supply the envelope and stamp, he was telling her white knuckles. Make sure she does it.

We'd better be going, Vickie said.

There was a longer pause now. Susie was seating a doll beside her, arranging its skirt.

OK then. Steve began moving the car off gently and Rod stepped back.

Bye, he said, raising one hand at Susie.

Goodbye, Daddy! Susie waved out the window. She was still waving and blowing kisses as the car turned out the gate.

Rod went inside and mooched around the house. He picked up the torn mosquito net and put it on the table. He looked at Susie's crumpled bed, but he could not bring himself to make it.

Later he drove into town in the battered utility he'd picked up cheap. The local police were sitting in a patrol car, watching him, when he went into the bottle department of the hotel.

Sometimes they drove slowly past his place to make sure he saw them. One night he had woken to find a spotlight flooding his bedroom.

He always ignored them. He ignored them now. He bought a bottle of Scotch and drove home again, keeping under the speed limit, checking the rear vision mirror.

At dusk he sat on the verandah, staring down the track. And that night he got maudlin drunk and blundered around the old farm house, talking to himself.

CHAPTER THREE

Rod dreamed that the two local coppers were shining a flashlight in his eyes. He squinted at the morning. A dazzle of sunlight was striking through the grapevine; the shadows of leaves stirred on the mildewed orange flowers of his bedroom wallpaper. He groaned and turned over, trying to sleep on. The telephone was ringing.

He was half out of bed when it stopped. He lay back and it started again. He stumbled into the living room, kicking over the Scotch bottle, still in jeans.

Hullo.

Rod? It's me.

G'day, Pop. Where are you?

Home. Alice Springs.

What's the time? He squinted at his wristwatch: nine o'clock.

Sorry if I got you up.

That's OK. Had a bit of a late night. Susie left yesterday.

Ah, well... There was a pause.

Everything OK? Rod asked.

Not too good.

Rod tensed. Not too good was serious. Just a sec, he said.

He stumbled back to the bedroom, and drained a glass of water he'd left by the bed. Then he went back to the phone.

What's up? he asked, sprawling on the sofa. His head thumped. He shut his eyes, trying to concentrate.

Tony's disappeared.

What do you mean, 'disappeared'? He opened his eyes.

Nobody's seen him since last Tuesday. He hasn't been in touch with the office, nothing.

Maybe he's on a trip somewhere.

He was supposed to be at work on Wednesday. He had a case coming up.

What about his flat?

I've been round there. There's nothing.

Have you told the police.

His father hesitated. For what it's worth.

What about his Mini Moke?

It's gone.

He could have broken down somewhere.

His father was silent.

But you don't think so.

No.

Rod sighed. From where he sprawled, through the lace curtains on the French doors, he looked up the empty track.

I'm coming back, he said. Nothing to keep me here.

Later he had a shower and fed the fowls: a flock of shabby Whitish Orpingtons with a panoramic view they didn't appreciate.

This was rugged timber country on the north coast of New South Wales: in it were great waterfalls where wild rivers dropped through rainforest into valleys like this one.

He'd bought twenty-five acres (and the rotting farm-house) with a grand dream to build it up as a hobby farm and riding school for kids; at least that's what he'd told the bank manager. Really, it was a place to drop out, the end of the road.

Up there in the mountains, stretching down from Queensland, the Aborigines and bushrangers had hidden; for up to fifty years the skeletons of lost aircraft and their occupants had been mouldering, never found.

He'd hoped to lose himself too; to moulder away in peace among these paddocks when they called off the search for him. But it wasn't working; peace was a hard paddock to find. In short, he wasn't making a very happy hermit.

He walked down to the river at the foot of his land and rolled in his illegal wire-netting fish-trap. Nothing for breakfast. Anyway, it was for Susie's sake, ironically, that he'd chosen this place within holiday distance from the city; the meaning had drained from it now she'd gone to live in New York.

He trudged back to the farmhouse, finished the Skippy corn flakes he'd bought for her, and booked a flight from Sydney to Alice Springs. Then he drove his old utility a couple of kilometres down the road to see Andy Adams, a local pensioner. His only friend here.

Andy lived in a tiny rent-free cottage by the road, once the gatehouse of a large sandstone mansion, still unoccupied, that a city doctor was restoring. Andy looked after the mansion and mowed the lawns.

Anybody home? Rod called at the kitchen door. He knew Andy would be around somewhere; it was too early for the pub.

Come on in.

He went inside. New colour photographs of Rugby League teams (cut from newspaper supplements) were stuck with curling sticky tape on the old kitchen walls. On the mantelpiece were small silver cups, green with verdigris, that Andy had won in ancient fishing competitions. They looked like he'd caught them too.

In here, Andy called from the bedroom. He was still in bed—or on it, in striped pyjamas buttoned at the neck, with an old blue dressing gown wrapped around him. His face was gaunt and luminous with pain.

Studying me form, he said. He was circling a turf guide on his lap.

Rod grinned; they kept things light. How'd you go at Randwick last week?

I had Black Rod in the first and Brolga Girl in the fourth. He winced and shifted: he also had Multiple Myeloma in his bone marrow.

Good on you. Bit crook, are you?

Giving me a bit of curry. Can't sit on the bloody mower.

No good. Anything I can do?

Nah. Be right tomorrer. I got a watermelon I was going to bring up for yer little girl.

She's gone. Thanks anyway. Only here for a couple of days.

Take it with yer, anyway, said Andy. I got three of the bastards.

Well, I was going to ask you. I've got to go to Alice Springs. Do you reckon you could look in on my place while I'm away? Feed the chooks?

CHAPTER FOUR

Flying inland, he left the Blue Mountains behind him like crumpled old clothing, old ambitions, the minor peaks of love. He dozed at a window, and already the coastal bush (and his farmhouse) were bleaching grey in his mind like drawings of the pioneer days in an old book; it was hard to believe that he'd intended once to spend the rest of his life there in that alien landscape.

He was going back to where he belonged, deep in the heart of the country—eyes shut, he cupped it in his mind, seeing its rich colours, its shape; the low tableland of the Northern Territory rising to the jungle-clothed gorges of Arnhem Land in the north, the MacDonnell Ranges down towards the Centre; the monoliths holding it down like orange rocks on a carpet.

No slab of continent was more magnetic than this, from the mighty rivers in the north that flowed through mangroves into the sea, to the inland rivers trickling south into salt lakes and the Simpson Desert. He knew it all. It was his.

Beneath him the green pastures and yellow geometric patches of wheat petered out into arid red. The iron roofs of lonely townships glinted like flecks of mica on the plain.

He was flying back towards the core of his own being, shedding what he could of the last twenty years in exile near the coast give or take holidays back at Alice.

Unconquering Hero Returns, declared the banners in his brain. Local Boy Didn't Make Good.

There were real banners at Alice Springs terminal—a mass of Aboriginal demonstrators jostled behind a Police line. They brandished Aboriginal flags and protest placards. Land rights! they were shouting. Land rights! Land rights!

Rod stopped beside a radio reporter who was trying to interview a tall fair man in his mid-thirties. He recognised the man: Christopher Partridge, a Northern Territory politician (and former mining engineer) who cultivated the white backlash.

Partridge was about to board a flight back to Darwin. Two tough-looking men (bodyguards?) stood between Partridge and the demonstrators. Partridge had provoked some violent clashes in the past

You've been down in the Centre a week now, Mr Partridge, the reporter said, and then he had to stop. He waved his mike in despair as the chanting increased.

Partridge was flushed, but he turned to make a queasy joke with an aide. His eyes glistened with suppressed anger.

The reporter tried again. Your comments on black rights issues seem to inflame the conflict between the black and white communities, would you agree?

I only speak the truth, said Partridge. He paused, and then pushed the reporter's mike towards the chanting. Let the public judge on which side there is restraint and rational debate.

However, said the reporter, some of your critics maintain that your predictions that there will be widespread ritual killings unless blacks assimilate to white law—I'm sorry. Let me try that again. Pause. Mr Partridge, do you seriously believe that there will be widespread ritual killings unless blacks are made to assimilate quickly?

I never say anything I do not believe. Partridge gestured at the crowd. "Listen to the voice of reason. Does that give