Mullumbimby (25 page)

Jo pulled on riding boots, grabbed her akubra and heard the kitchen door slam loudly behind her. Have to buy a new latch for that door, she made a mental note, as she went to catch the old mare, pushing down the worry she felt at the idea of really acting like a horse owner, spending time with the yarraman instead of leaving her to sit in the paddock. Just as soon as the rest of the camphors are sprayed, and the cattle yard gets built, I'll be on that door latch in a jiffy. In two shakes of a lamb's tail. In anything that doesn't require a duck, a june bug, or any kind of fucking phrase that means nothing and says nothing to a Goorie woman living on her own country at the bottom of the southern hemisphere.

Under the intent supervision of the steers, Jo slid a snaffle bit into Athena's mouth and pulled the headpiece of the bridle up behind her ears, furry with thick winter hair. No carefree riding in a halter today, old girl, not when we're going out on the tarmac and you haven't felt a saddle for weeks. She swung her right leg over the nag, feeling the strain in her lower back that never really disappeared these days. Then she footed the other stirrup and rode out, away from the glaring red rates bill. Away from the still flourishing camphors along the fenceline, and the unfinished yard, away from the stony cairn that she remembered Comet by.

As the farm disappeared behind her, the slow regular clap of Athena's unshod hooves on the bitumen was as familiar to Jo as her own heartbeat, and as soothing. She relaxed into the saddle, letting Tin Wagon Road by horseback take her worries and reframe them as the minutiae they were. Jo let herself be entranced by the curl of the tree fern tips and the bright new growth on the callistemons lining the gullies which ran down off Bottlebrush; by the moist black lips of the Angus cattle chewing their cud with their forelegs folded under them; by the flitting among lantana thickets of the wrens and butcherbirds and piping yellow-eyes. A glossy black spangled drongo perched singularly on the powerline above the creek. Jo rode underneath it, admiring the perfect symmetry of its fish-like tail. Something in nature demanded that a drongo tail should have that distinctive shape, and that the wrens have their pertly upturned ones, and that the kingfisher perched there in the quandong in the neighbour's paddock should have a third sort, but what? She didn't have the faintest idea.

Ten minutes and three creek crossings later, a Mercedes coupe drove past her, two of its wheels politely leaving the road so that a wide margin separated it from horse and rider. Jo rewarded this courtesy with a brief wave. The car crawled by, both the tourists in it enthusiastically waving back. An olive-skinned woman turned around in the passenger seat, glowing with a beatific smile. You would smile, lady, Jo reflected, driving around in a car like that. Swap ya for a shitbox Toyota with an empty petrol tank, luv.

To Jo's surprise, the Mercedes stopped a hundred metres up the road, then reversed in a wobbly line until it stood beside her once again. It sat idling expensively in the middle of the bitumen. Then the woman in the passenger seat pressed a button and wound down a window. Inane pop music spilled out, and she reached to turn the volume down.

A massive square-cut diamond glinted on the woman's left hand, and Jo fantasised about turning into Captain Thunderbolt. She had a vision of whipping an old-school musket out from behind her back, demanding the ring and then galloping off into the safety of the World Heritage with it stowed in her saddlebag.
All's fair in love and war–

‘Oh! Hold still! Can I take your photo?' the woman cried suddenly, iPhone already up to her eye, and her perfect white teeth bared on display beneath it. Jo scowled at this intrusion.

No. Fuck off. You'll steal my soul.

‘Go on,' she muttered. The woman promptly clicked three or four times.

‘Aamaal – can we go?' the husband said, looking embarrassed.

‘Oh! That's a fabulous shot!'

The woman beamed at the tiny screen and held it up for her husband's inspection. Then she wound the window back up – without speaking to Jo, let alone offering to show her the photos.

Hello?
Have I dematerialised or what, she thought in astonishment.

The coupe accelerated and promptly disappeared around the next bend, leaving Jo mired in disproportionate rage. She heeled Athena forward, snorting with hostility.

A fabulous shot.
Akubra, stockhorse, tan skin: yep, I'm the woman from Snowy River alright. But come home with me, Mercedes lady, come and take a photo of my unpaid rates notice stuck on the fridge. Or of the magic Toyota that runs on nothing but petrol fumes. Better yet, come up to Chris's place and frame an artful fucking shot of the tomato sauce sandwiches she's having for dinner.

Jo rode furiously, wishing that she was an old cleverwoman. She
would curse the tourists and their sports car. She'd make it break down, she'd make those fuckers run out of petrol instead of waltzing around on her land with no thought for anyone except themselves. She'd make them career off the road into a nice solid gum tree, see the Mercedes explode in a fireball of plenty of petrol and plenty of money and plenty of fucking bungooed privilege that doesn't see anything past its own narcissistic arsehole–

Your anger is buried so deep, Therese had lectured her once, you don't even know it's there.

Jo shortened her reins and steamed as she rode on. She recalled Twoboy's jokey threat at the Billi pub the night they'd met:
I'll be on the phone to Al Qaeda mob, onetime.
For the first time in her life, Jo felt she was within touching distance of the anger that would make someone say those words and really mean them.

From the corner of her eye she suddenly noticed something watching her. Someone. It was Bluey, lifting now from one of the big bottlebrush trees beside the creek.

The heron flew towards her and landed on a fencepost not five metres away. It stood there on its scaly yellow legs and regarded her balefully. Jo pulled Athena up, the horse fidgeting and tossing her head with impatience to canter. The dogs watched with alert eyes and pricked ears.

What is it, mulanyin?

The bird didn't move, but continued staring at her. After a minute of intense avian scrutiny Jo began to feel as though she had something to atone for. She looked around. Without any word from her, the dogs had both – oddly – sat down on their haunches facing the heron, as if waiting for instructions.

What the hell?

To Jo's horror, Bluey flew down from the fencepost to land, this time on the narrow bitumen road directly in front of her, where the dogs could easily rush it. She kicked her feet from the stirrups, ready to jump down and defend her bird from the mutts. But Warrigal and Daisy continued to sit humbly and merely observe. The world's least
imposing sentry, mulanyin stood there blocking her path forward on its impossibly frail legs, apparently not bothered by the dogs nor by Athena looming hugely over it.

What the fuck is this?

The heron raised its slender grey neck and released a harsh croak at Jo. Athena lowered her head almost to the road and blew her nostrils out warily at the intruder. Jo, too, breathed out in astonishment, wondering if this was a sign. Was there a disaster waiting for her if she kept going along the road? Should she turn back and go home? Was Ellen in some terrible trouble?

With a last guttural croak, Bluey lifted again and flapped its way to a nearby quandong. Jo eyed it uneasily. She felt marooned in the middle of Tin Wagon Road, warned off going forward, and yet unwilling to go back home so soon. Warrigal and Daisy stood up and turned into dogs again. Athena began to fuss and fidget beneath her, throwing her head up against the pressure of the bit, and prancing on the spot in a thoroughbred high step of impatience. Okay, okay, settle petal. Jo threw another glance at the heron, which was winging away from her now, headed towards Bottlebrush. She glanced down at the dogs, and decided to keep going, cautiously.

Five minutes later, Athena was puffing with unaccustomed effort and too much grass. Jo drew in her left rein and turned up a fire trail, almost opposite Chris's track. The mare's hooves crunched sharp gravel underfoot as they climbed the slope away from Tin Wagon Road. Jo kept a careful eye out for pointed stones that would lame Athena and mean a long walk home. After riding for a while through a heavily forested stretch, she reached flatter, more open country. The trail was lined by paddocks on both sides, and purebred grey Brahmins dotted the landscape. In this clearer country, without the trees acting as a soundbreak, Jo could suddenly hear the rushing of Stony Creek, surprisingly loud from halfway up the ridge. In front of her, rainforest clustered thickly around mossy boulders that made Jo
think of scrub turkeys and brown snakes. In the sky above the forest flamed a spectacular red and purple sunset.

As she enjoyed the spectacle – red sky at night, shepherd's delight – Jo felt the old tug in her gut return.
Go west.
There was still something waiting for her in the sunset country, something important. Things don't go away just because you ignore them, it seemed. This must be how Ellen feels, Jo thought, when she knows something's about to go wrong. Only in Jo's case, it didn't seem like bad news that waited. More like important information.

It was unsettling, though, and unwelcome, too. And what, she suddenly thought in alarm, if it has to do with that bloody talga?

With this thought Jo pulled Athena up abruptly. Twoboy was desperate to hear the voices, to get the talga down on paper for the tribunal, to prove once and for all that he owned the true song of the country, and not just his father's stories about Grandad Tommy Jackson. He had kept at Jo since the day she fell off, nagging her to return to the fallen gum with him. To Twoboy's bewilderment she had always refused. That hidden part of the culture, Jo shivered – no, he could keep it. If there were secrets in the hills,
mooki,
ancestors holding sacred knowledge and secrets, well then let them stay where they bloody well were. Life was hard enough without inviting that kind of trouble in. It wasn't as if any white tribunal was going to believe they were there anyway. Twoboy was cracked, totally bloody womba, if he thought they were.

Sitting on the big old mare as she faced the setting sun, Jo realised that her pulse was pounding hard in the side of her neck. It gradually dawned on her that, distracted first by the tourist's rudeness and then by the intervention of mulanyin, she'd turned away from Chris's gate ten minutes ago without thinking, and had – for no good reason at all – headed west when her intention had been the complete opposite. A shiver of alarm ran through her, and she quickly turned Athena around to head downhill, back where they had come from. Gravel again crunched underneath as she rode the horse forward. A few small stones dislodged and went bouncing down the steep dirt track in front of her.

To Jo's horror, after they'd gone no more than a dozen steps downhill, she heard it again. The indistinct sound of a distant motor.

Leave me the fuck alone, will you? Sing to Twoboy, who actually wants to hear it!

She gave a sharp yip of alarm, wishing that the track was wider, safe to trot or, better yet, canter down. Instead, they were forced to pick a way downhill through the gravel, at a rapid walk. The sound followed almost the whole way, finally fading as the bitumen came into view. By the time they reached the safety of the road, Jo was sweating beneath her jumper, and cranky with anxiety and confusion. She could feel the beginnings of a headache starting up at the base of her skull. It was all too much.

Bloody ignorant tourists.

Mulanyin acting like a crazy bird.

Mooki trying to sing her songs she didn't want to know about, in a place she had never meant to go.

Thoroughly spooked, Jo abandoned the idea of visiting Chris. It would be better just to get home to the safety of her own place, where mooki and mulanyin and rude-fucker dugais couldn't intrude, and where she could think in peace about what all these events might mean.

But Athena had sensed her rider's edginess and in typical horsy fashion began to share it. Agitated, and pointed towards home, the mare could see no good reason at all not to gallop at full pelt, away from the inchoate danger in the hills. Jo had to fight her for control. Being on a bolting thoroughbred was hardly more fun than being surrounded by chanting mooki on a lonely ridgetop. Denied her gallop, Athena jigged sideways in uncomfortable rebellion, throwing Jo roughly around in the saddle. The horse's agitation took hold and stuck until, finally, after ten minutes of painful struggle, Jo lost her temper with the mare. Swearing loudly and leaning far forward, she smacked Athena's neck hard with the flat of her right hand. The horse jerked away violently, showing the whites of her eyes, and half-rearing. The dogs slunk near Athena's hocks with their tails tucked low, sensing that they, too, were only moments away from assault.
For a brief minute, Jo hated herself and Athena equally. Then, as they jigged towards the final creek crossing before home, and as the road narrowed to one lane for the last time, Jo heard a car coming up fast from behind her.

‘Get off the road,' she yelled in fury at Daisy and Warrigal, ‘you stupid fucking dogs.' She reefed at the reins again and Athena nosed the sky in protest. Jo pulled her roughly onto the skerrick of footpath away from the vehicle – which was, thankfully, slowing as it drew near. Don't rear, Jo prayed, for Christ's sake don't rear up with a car right on top of us.

She glanced anxiously around and discovered Rob Starr's yellow ute drawing near, with young Sam Nurrung in the passenger seat, and a chainsaw sliding noisily forward in the tray as Starr hit the skids. Hearing the racket of metal scraping on metal, Jo was momentarily grateful to be on Athena and not on Comet, who would definitely have freaked.

Slowing some more, Starr lifted his right forefinger to Jo in the classic country salute. As she fought to keep Athena and both dogs off the bitumen, and hoping desperately that Starr hadn't seen her slap the mare's neck, Jo didn't respond – she couldn't have responded if she had wanted to.