Mullumbimby (12 page)

Instead, she footed the stirrup, gathered up her reins, and wheeled the colt around into the Big Paddock, heading for the back corner where the farm met the fire trail bordering the World Heritage. As Comet stepped out beneath her with his mother's big thoroughbred stride, Jo looked at her flourishing stands of camphors that needed poisoning, and at the Big Paddock that needed slashing with a tractor she didn't own, and would have to hire with money she definitely didn't have. These jobs, lingered on, normally drove her to distraction, but this morning she felt something close to detachment. Heaven is the breeze between a good horse's ears, the Arabs reckon. True dat, she thought, as Comet plunged through the knee-high paspalum, eager to be cantering, while Athena stood at the dam with the fattening steers, her head raised, calmly watching where her son and the human were off to this time.

Past the makeshift wire gate and inside the World Heritage, Comet
trod a narrow kangaroo trail through high, white-trunked eucalypts and the ever-present camphors, climbing, climbing all the while as the farmhouse shrank behind them and the calls of pigeons and whip-birds replaced the sounds of cattle and the rushing creek. Civilisation faded and the ground grew steep on both sides of the track as they climbed. The red soil of the gully Jo rode through was moistly lush, sprouting dozens of tree ferns. This high country harboured tribes of lizards and birds and other slithering critters which rustled away through the leaf litter in alarm at her intrusion.

Halfway to the top, Jo noticed a light green plant-protector marring the jungled slope on her left. Curious, she pulled Comet up. When she dismounted and clambered over to it through the lantana thickets, she discovered a healthy marijuana seedling happily thriving inside the little, open-topped plastic tent. It's not my land, she told herself, and so it's not my problem, unlike the dozen or so plants the Mooneys had left dotting the margins of the farm. Plants that Jo had pulled up and thrown unceremoniously on the fire pile, while making sure that Ellen saw, and noticed. The kid knew very well that her mother considered yarndi just another tool of the landgrabbers.
Leave it alone. Stay away from the snake. Addiction is no revolution.

Leaving this plant unmolested behind her, Jo rode on through dappled sunlight. Comet was sweating now, but still steady and surefooted beneath her. The kangaroo trail broadened out, branching to the right and turning into a clear cattle path as they climbed above the thick scrubby country into more open land. Now there was an occasional glimpse of the ocean. Far below were the houses on Tin Wagon Road, and the cattle yards where the old dip used to be – and here was a family of four bounding wallabies making Comet shy and prance, half unseating Jo and making her swear and wonder about the whole idea of riding alone on a young, green horse in remote hill country.

She heaved herself back into position in the saddle, shaken and breathing hard. Then came some cloven cattle tracks, and a motorbike tyre print in soft mud, strange, it looks quite fresh and yet I've heard nothing, Jo thought: even if the breeze is from the other
direction, you'd normally hear a trail bike, wouldn't you? And here is some country that's had a bit of a fire through recently, and here's some tall lantana to avoid so as not to be sandpapered by it as the horse goes past, and here, suddenly, is a fallen eucalypt log a metre high blocking the bloody trail, and the ground on either side far too steep and too soft to ride around–

Bugger.

Jo sat still, contemplating the situation. On the other end of the reins Comet snatched a few mouthfuls of grass. The tree trunk lying in front of them was smooth and barkless, exactly like the white gums she'd ridden through for the past half-hour. If she'd been on Athena it would have been an easy decision to back up a few metres and then trust the clever old mare to make the jump, since the track on the other side was clear and open. But jumping Comet? The colt was barely used to having her on his back, let alone leaping fallen trees on high, narrow bush tracks with nobody around to help if things went wrong. Jo screwed her mouth sideways, considering the risks. The smart thing to do, she knew, would be just to turn around and go home. Mosey on back to the ranch, cowgirl.

Finally, she reached a decision, and dismounted. She unclipped one side of the rein from the bit, and pushed Comet back with a stern finger on his nose. Obediently the horse reversed in a straight line, until there was ten clear metres of path between him and the tree. Jo geed him up, and then she ran on foot directly at the trunk, the double-length of rein clutched in her left hand and Comet trotting willingly behind her. In a fluid motion Jo leapt onto the trunk – willing Comet to jump, too, and for her riding boots not to slip and fail her.

After the tiniest of hesitations, Comet lifted his forelegs and curved himself easily over the tree, landing on the other side with room to spare. Then he kept going – with enough speed to snatch the single rein unwittingly out of Jo's hand.

Jerked forward by the horse's momentum, Jo stumbled. She fell hard against a protruding branch of the fallen eucalypt,
shit and bugger
and fuck
as the muddy ground whirled up to meet her head, very
very
much the wrong way.

Jo sat, blowing, coughing, and spitting several times onto the bushfire-blackened ground beside the track.

When her breath eventually returned to normal, she cursed her empty left hand and rubbed at her bruised ribcage. Comet had disappeared around the bend, rein flapping merrily in the breeze of his departure.

‘Comet,' Jo called hopefully. ‘Comet, come back boy.'

As if. That never happened. Horses didn't backtrack, given a choice. He'd be halfway to Mullum by now, if he could find a trail through. Probably hightail it back to his old paddock at Oliver's. Jo cursed a final curse, and cautiously began to haul herself up to her feet by the offending branch, which promptly snapped and sent her back to earth once more, arse up. Streaks of pain radiated up and down her left side from the rib that was really caning her now. This time Jo's swearing was of a rare quality: she lay face-up in the mud cursing the malice of the tree, her own stupidity, the dugai who had so rightly created a World Heritage park and then so wrongly failed to maintain the tracks (and what were cattle doing up in the World Heritage anyway?), her bruised ribs, the unknown and unheard motorbike rider for not being here to rescue her, and even poor innocent Comet who could hardly be expected to know he was meant to stop beside her once the trunk had been successfully negotiated.

Jo lay in the red mud a good while, gazing up at the clear blue of the sky, wondering what the lesson was here. Not to overreach the abilities of young horses, probably, though Aunty Barb would have said she was stood on ground that didn't want her there, and to listen to that ground, pay attention to it or else pay the price.

Listen to country, girl, it's been here a damn sight longer than you have.

Jo sighed heavily and felt the pain in her side afresh. Okay, Aunty Barb, you win. She lay and pricked her binung and deliberately let in the bush sounds that she had been keeping out with her swearing and her incessant thinking. Shuttup, Jo, and just
listen.
Where am I?
What lives here, who lived here? What's gone, and what remains? Jo's breathing gradually eased to slowness, and she at last really began to hear. Birds. Insects. A humming in the far distance. The trail bike rider. Or no, perhaps not a bike. A plane? No, not that either. Superman, she laughed to herself, as the humming continued.

The sun warmed Jo's face where she lay, and as her hurt rib stopped complaining she became almost comfortable. Her limbs relaxed, and her jaw softened. The smell of the earth's rich humus entered her nostrils. A magpie sang a little further down the slope.
Listen to that koruhmburuhn talga.
Just slow down and listen. Aunty Barb's dry cackle echoed in her mind – ‘It's always a good time for dadirri, unless a Brahmin bull's after you that is!' No Brahmins here, Aunt, not many even down on the road a good half-hour walk away as the crow flies, but still the humming of a motor continuing, on and on. The koruhmburuhn warbled again, and was answered now by a bellbird medley. A chainsaw, maybe? No. Water pump, then. No. The sound had a human quality to it that ruled all these out. And it was at the instant that this thought came into Jo's mind – a human quality – that the humming became much louder and much clearer. And then, goosepimpling all over, Jo finally heard the humming for what it really was. It wasn't a motor at all. What she was hearing was voices. Ancient human voices.

Chanting.

The hills were singing to her.

Jo's bowels shrank where she lay. Oh Jesus, oh sweet fucking Jesus Christ. She froze as though utter stillness could stop the terror, could save her. How she wished, now, that she'd never gotten on Comet, never ridden through the wire fence into the World Heritage, and, above all, had taken seriously the blind freddy message of a felled tree directly in her path. How stupid am I, she wondered, how fucking blind? Just like the dugai, blundering into God knows what danger for God knows what insane reason.

On and on the chant hummed, now rising and now falling. Like wind in high treetops. Like waves slapping a shoreline over and over.

The words were indistinct. Although Jo was far from fluent in language, she thought she could pick out some words.
Jagun – land
– and
mibun – eagle
– among them. And
jalgani
too –
woman.
The voices, she realised after a minute of horrified gut-clenched listening, were male and female both. Jo breathed out then, a tiny hesitant breath, since women's voices meant it was unlikely she'd stumbled – stupidly, ignorantly, unbelievably unwittingly – onto sacred men's ground. Breathing lightly now, her heart racing still. Good one, Aunty Barb, so what do I do now? Dadirri is one thing, but what the hell do you do with
this?

Is a Brahmin bull after you? Aunty Barb asked sharply from the Piccabeen cemetery. No, Aunt, Jo replied testily, obviously not. Well then, Aunty Barb retorted,
it's always a good time for dadirri.

And so Jo reluctantly lay still and listened some more. Two minutes of chanting passed. Three minutes. She heard the words for Land. Eagle. Woman. Water. The Southern Cross. And could have sworn she'd even heard
yarraman
and something that sounded a lot like
Tin Wagon,
too.

Maybe, she suddenly felt, maybe it's not a warning at all, but some other kind of message. Not a sign to stop on pain of death – No Trespassing – perhaps instead, the tree was just a means to slow her down, stop her mad rushing about, to get through to her? Wait here a while, girl. Stop with us.

Heartened by this thought, Jo slowly winched her way to the vertical, using the branch stub. She sat and looked about her. There was nobody visible, from this century or any other. The talga belonged to the trees, the wind, the earth, the charcoaled ground where fire had passed through, the lantana thickets and the tree ferns that clustered at the base of the strangling figs and camphors. And was the chant fading now? Growing fainter?

Struck with longing to hear it continue, in fact for it never to end, Jo felt tears rise up in her eyes. Don't go! she wanted to cry out to the singers, but didn't. Instead she snatched her phone, hit the record button, held her Nokia up to the Bundjalung talga echoing off the
ridge around her. Played it back, and found miraculously that centuries could talk to one another after all. I've got it, she marvelled, as the chant faded away to nothing, a mere whispering of leaves and the return of birds chirping and calling, I've got it in my pocket. She replayed the song three times, amazed and fearful and wondering. Why me, why now? What for? And above all else, what's Twoboy gonna make of this?

‘Hey, you two,' Jo called from where she stood pegging clothes onehanded onto the line, her ribs still nipping at her each time she lifted her arm. On the veranda, Twoboy was finger picking the Maton, trying to bring back old chord patterns and long-lost Archie Roach lyrics.

‘Hmmm?'

‘Whaddya reckon's up there? In the hills?' She gestured with her lips and chin to the high country. The singing country.

Twoboy glanced up at the ridgeline and then at Chris, who was flicking through the paper. Chris shrugged. Not really her country, despite what Aunt Sally had said, and despite living on the opposite ridgeline below Bottlebrush for nearly fifteen years. Her shrug deferred to Twoboy as a real Bundjalung.

‘Jiraman. Snake, possum.' Twoboy said.

‘Plus the Beast of Billinudgel,' Chris grinned. ‘And a bitta yarndi.'

‘Lotta
yarndi,' Twoboy chimed in with a wry smile.

‘Yeah, not that. I mean old stuff.' Jo turned around from the clothes line, her basket empty on her hip.

‘Oh.' A pause. ‘Be heaps, probably.' Twoboy was close-lipped, wary of the question. Having Chris sitting there didn't help much either, but Jo pushed on nevertheless.

‘Cos you know how I rode up there this morning–'

Twoboy stopped fingering chords as Jo came over and sat with her back up against the veranda post, legs straight in front of her. She stared at the knees of her jeans, which were thinning, just about
to break through the visible white strands of remaining denim into actual holes. Time for a visit to Vinnies.

‘I got up past the thick scrub, to where it thins out...'

‘Yeah.' Twoboy put the guitar aside.

‘And something pretty weird happened.' Jo stopped. She didn't want to sound womba. She didn't want to
be
womba. Twoboy and Chris waited patiently for her to elaborate.

‘I fell off, like I said, and I was lying in the mud up there, I was sorta catching my breath, see, and I heard this buzzing noise. At first I thought it was a trail bike or something ... but it wasn't.' Jo halted again.