Forecast (3 page)

So close that he is showered with salt spray, he receives an answer. A humpback breaches in front of the ship, its vertically pleated white belly like a vest made from salvaged sheets. The whale, a female, thumps the skin of the ocean with its flukes and her calf leaps out of the water beside her. Their long curved bodies make a fleeting uneven arch. They sing, an antiphonal chant, and Rufus translates.

Thank you,
he telegraphs back.

Jodie's desk in the capitol building in Wirranbandi is a scratched and gouged door resting across two wooden sawhorses in a room that was once the lobby and teller area of a now-defunct bank. The room is rather grand, with high ceilings and ornate mouldings and the blistered remnants of gilt around tall windows that date from the glory days of banking and gold-rush rumours. Apart from the makeshift desk and a view of the wide verandah, the room contains four termite-pocked wooden pews and a linoleum floor the colour of which could best be described as violently mottled dried blood. These items date from the brief period when the former bank served as the Holiness Church of the Word of God Triumphant. Following its fleeting liturgical reincarnation, the building was derelict for a decade, though often put to use for drinking bouts, morning-afters, and sexual trysts when jackaroos flocked into town from the
cattle stations, every last cow-hand hell-bent on squandering his pay with the local barmaids.

There are no screens on the windows so flies are a problem. Jodie keeps a fan in her hand to fend them off. Naturally there is no air conditioning, but propeller blades in the ceiling turn sluggishly, run off a generator on the back verandah. Periodically, and without warning, the generator, choked with red dust, takes smoko breaks that can vary from ten minutes to several hours in duration. Since nine in the morning, when the office opens for official business (currency transfers, passport applications, enlistment in the militia) the dust has been settling like a terracotta mist on Jodie's desk and on Jodie. Her arms feel gritty when she strokes them, and this pleases her, because she figures that if she belongs anywhere, she belongs to the earth itself.

Jodie is reading, or trying to read, but she is aware of the horse on the verandah and of the feral pig snuffling at the door and also of the bloke with the semi-automatic who has just dismounted and knotted his reins around the railing. He is unkempt and unshaven. Even from this distance, she can smell the stink of sweat and of long-unwashed body. She can also see that the bloke is good-looking, the Hugh Jackman type, a real hunk.

‘You Ruth?' he asks as though he owns the place and has no need to knock.

Jodie raises her eyes over her book and lowers them again. She affects boredom. ‘That's what my pa calls me.'

He is now leaning over her desk. ‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘It means that's what my pa calls me. It's not what I call myself or what folks who know me call me.'

‘
Folks
?' The Hugh Jackman bloke ponders this word. ‘What's
folks
? The local codgers, you mean?'

‘Right. That's who I mean.'

‘What do they call you?'

‘They don't call me Ruth. Since you do, I know you're here because my pa sent you.'

The man props his semi-automatic, pointed to the ceiling, against Jodie's desk, removes his Akubra and scratches his head.

‘That supposed to be a white flag?' Jodie asks.

‘What?'

‘The fact that your semi-automatic is not pointed at me.'

‘You're one very strange sheila,' he says.

‘So they tell me.'

‘Sexy little she-dingo, though, aren't ya?'

‘You better watch out. I bite, and I'm rabid.'

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Your dad didn't warn me. Didn't give me a clue. To tell you the truth, I was expecting someone with unshaved legs who'd be reading the Bible.'

Jodie maintains eye contact, expressionless. Her customer fidgets with his Akubra and looks at the floor. ‘Didn't mean to offend you,' he says.

‘You've offended me.'

‘I'm sorry. I beg your pardon.'

‘My pardon costs,' Jodie says.

The man doesn't know whether to treat this as a joke or a dare. He is increasingly nervous. ‘Well … ah … what will it cost?'

‘That depends.' There is a long silence, during which the man looks at the floor and Jodie looks at the man. ‘You got any questions?'

‘Yeah,' he says, ‘I got one. How old are you?'

‘Two months shy of eighteen,' Jodie says. ‘Keep that in mind. You lay a hand on a minor, you're in trouble. Not to mention the fact that my pa would cut off your balls.'

The man laughs nervously. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you are some firecracker. Just the same, hats off to your dad. Got the right idea, I reckon, and all us cattlemen and squatters are behind him. Name's Danny.' He extends a hand. ‘Danny O'Sullivan.'

‘Not all that pleased to meet you, Danny,' Jodie says, ignoring the hand.

‘You not gonna give me your name?'

‘I thought you knew it.'

‘Well, I thought I did too. But now I don't
know, do I, Ruth? Or whoever you are. What do you call yourself?'

‘Jodie.'

‘Jodie. Uh-huh. OK. Why Jodie?'

‘Because that's the name my mother gave me, and it's the one on my birth certificate.'

‘Then why does your dad call you Ruth?'

‘Biblical reasons.'

‘You're gonna have to explain.'

‘Book of Ruth.
Wither thou goest, I will go.
Etcetera, etcetera. Don't know what you're doing here or why you've been talking to my pa if you don't know your Bible.'

‘Well,' Danny says, embarrassed. ‘Been on a cattle station in Channel Country all my life, and never had time for those toy boys in Brisbane or Canberra. Or Sydney either, when those silly buggers try to push in. So I'm with your dad there, he can count on me, I'm all for secession. I've signed up for the militia, I got the flag flying, I'm a paid-up member of the Republic of Outer Barcoo. But that don't necessarily mean I go along with … well, you know … the religious stuff, it's just not my billy of tea. So you're gonna have to explain the Bible bit.'

‘Book of Ruth. Old Testament. Ruth says to Naomi, her mother-in-law, that no matter where Naomi goes (and they're both widows, see?) she'll
go with her. She'll never leave.
Wither thou goest, I will go.
My pa wanted a Ruth for a daughter.'

Danny turns the rim of his Akubra in his hands, round and round, as though he's a clock gone crazy. He flicks his eyes up at Jodie then looks at the floor again. ‘I don't get it,' he says.

‘In plain English, he took for granted that I'd always tag along. To wherever. To western Queensland, to Outer Barcoo. To nowhere. To here.'

‘This ain't nowhere.'

‘Yeah? You think?'

‘Outer Barcoo ain't nowhere. But what about your mum? What does she—?'

‘None of your business.'

‘Where are you from, Jodie-Ruth?'

‘Before here? Texas. Before that? South Carolina. We got secession in our DNA.'

‘Dunno what you're talking about, but I knew your dad was a Yank, so I knew you were too. I knew that before you even opened your mouth. You sure do talk like a Yank.'

Jodie throws her ballpoint pen at Danny. It hits him like a feather and bounces onto the floor. ‘That's an insult,' she says. ‘Don't you know better than to call a Southerner a Yankee? I don't talk anything like a Yankee because I'm not one and nor is my pa.'

Danny rolls his eyes and scratches his head. ‘Yanks are Yanks,' he says.

‘Neither of us has ever even been north of the Mason-Dixon line.'

‘Dunno what you're talking about, but a Yank is a Yank.'

Jodie says sourly, ‘That's like calling an Aussie a Pom. How would you like it if I said you talked like a Pommie?'

‘But I don't.'

‘Exactly my point. Please get it into your thick head that I'm not a Yankee and I don't sound like one. So. If you're here to apply for a passport, here's the form. If you're here to sign up for the militia, there's a different—'

‘I already signed up for that with your dad.'

‘If you are here for currency exchange, I got Aussie dollars in a locked strongbox.'

‘You are really
something
, ain't you, Miss Not-a-Yankee Jodie-Ruth?'

‘You got a problem, I can put you down for an appointment with the President of the Republic.'

‘You mean your dad?'

Jodie meets Danny's gaze steadily until he drops his eyes.

‘Your dad's got a bit of a reputation,' he says, ‘when it comes to his kid.'

‘Trigger-happy, is that what you heard? You got that right. With a temper that's always on the boil.'

‘But we understand that. It's natural.' Danny's tone is subdued, respectful, peace-making. The rim of his Akubra turns faster and faster in his fingers. ‘A man's gotta protect his girls. Women, you know, we gotta take them under our wing because they can't look after themselves.'

‘The premier of Queensland,' Jodie says tartly, ‘is a woman.'

Danny spits on the floor of the capitol building. ‘Right,' he says. ‘There you go. F-ing Blighty. Goes down on the toy boys, we reckon. Doesn't it just make you sick?'

‘Certain things,' Jodie says, ‘do indeed make me sick. They make me very sick indeed.'

Danny raises his eyes to hers then nervously drops them again.

‘I done something to offend you?' he asks.

Jodie ignores this. ‘Are you here to change currency? Or for a passport?'

‘Both. I got to have Aussie dosh and I got to get a passport.'

‘What's the passport for?'

‘Whad'ya think? For the usual reason.'

‘The usual reason is foreign travel. Outside of the Republic. Where're you going?'

‘Brisbane. Don't want to, but I got to. Family funeral.'

Jodie nods toward the horse hitched to the verandah rail. ‘You planning to ride all the way?'

‘Very funny. I got a truck.'

‘But you don't have a licence?'

‘Used to have one. State of Queensland. Expired about ten years ago, I think, and who bothers out here? Anyway, your dad says, and I'm with him, that our passports are legal ID and legal driving licences. We got rights and we got guns to back 'em up.'

Jodie stamps Danny's passport application with the seal of the Republic of Outer Barcoo. She empties his little drawstring bag of silver guineas, each coin embossed with the Southern Cross, legal currency of the republic. She unlocks her strongbox and changes his Barcoo guineas for Australian dollars at current rates.

‘Thanks,' Danny says. He hefts up his semi-automatic. ‘Is it a killin' offence with your dad or you if I ask you out for a date?'

‘You've got an appealing taste for risk,' Jodie says.

‘Is that a yes?'

‘I got certain conditions.'

‘Such as?'

‘You got to take a shower before you come get me.'

‘Deal.'

‘You got to shave and wear clean clothes.'

‘Cross my heart.'

‘You got to come in your truck, not on a horse, and you got to take me somewhere with tablecloths
and knives and forks and flowers in a vase on the table.'

Danny licks his index finger and crosses his heart.

‘So what?' Jodie wants to know scathingly, not for one second believing. ‘Are we gonna drive all the way to Cunnamulla?'

‘Better than that.'

‘Okay, then. Where?'

‘My shack,' he says. ‘I got export-quality steak in the freezer. I got a lace tablecloth that used to be my mum's. I'm as good as the devil's chef with the barbie.'

Jodie eyes him balefully. ‘Oh right. Your shack. You think I'm gonna fall for that?'

‘Swear to God, you'll be safe as a nun.'

It's a staring match and Jodie is the first to lower her eyes. ‘When?' she says.

‘Tonight?'

‘Just remember, I'm gonna let my dad know, I'm underage, and I got my own gun.'

 

In fact, though she knows how the entire Wirranbandi chapter will almost certainly end, Jodie does not inform her dad about Danny or about her date. She showers, applies a curling
iron to her hair, sprays herself with perfume. She puts on bikini panties, tight jeans, and a soft cotton T-shirt, no bra. Since her father is still out recruiting, she goes back to the capitol building. She mists the office of the Republic of Outer Barcoo with air freshener. It's a eucalyptus scent, all she's got, but will have to do. She takes her diary from a desk drawer and settles into one of the pews. She thinks about whether to write another letter to her mother, but writes nothing. Instead she simply stares across the verandah at the red earth and the sky. It still shocks her, just how much sky there is, and how suddenly it goes dark. Pouf! It's like a hurricane lantern blown out, like a blind pulled down.

She turns on the lamp at her desk.

Then she writes:
Where are you? Are you still alive, Mama? Will you ever find me? Will I ever find you? Is it always the end of the world? Does it have to be? Can there be some other kind of ending?

From one of the desk drawers, she lifts copies of her father's sermons and political tracts and his Constitution for the Republic, and from underneath those she extracts her secret folder of clippings. These come from assorted newspapers, all illicit, all read furtively, all filched from airports or railway stations or newsagents or from recycling bins in various towns.

Her folder has separator title pages, each title clipped from headlines and stuck on with cheap white glue.

Republic of Texas
.

Republic of Canaan: a history of the secession of a Bible-based Confederate county in upstate South Carolina.

She has made a new title page:
Republic of Outer Barcoo, Queensland, Australia.
She cut that headline from the
Sydney Morning Herald
and so far the only article in the folder came from that same issue of the Sydney paper. There is photographic documentation (fuzzy and inconclusive) and the investigative reporter claims that large caches of weapons exist on a number of cattle stations and that there are widespread rumours of sedition, of revolution, of covert intention for sabotage and for violent secession from both the State of Queensland and the Commonwealth of Australia. A spokesperson from the premier's office says that the situation is being monitored but that no one takes too seriously the ravings of a small lunatic fringe. Yes, they are heavily armed and dangerous, but they are few. In the event of siege, they would be wiped out in a matter of hours.