The Burial (17 page)

As true as a compass.

And then he did not doubt where he was or why he was there. There were a thousand stars that he could not name and they were just a thousand versions of himself that he did not know and he felt no resistance, just degrees of goodness and badness all seeking each other, all wanting, somehow, to come together.

It did not matter then what he had done or not done. Around him the air was liquid and warm and he could move through it any way he chose. He sat up and he saw everything around him—the hut, the grass, the trees, the dark. They all drew in breath when he drew in breath and when he held his breath so did they all.

There was no distance then and no time. There were selves within selves enfolding each other. He had as much strength as the tree and as much force as the mountain. He was all the elements. He was the weather. It belonged to him.

He heard music then, and he did not know where it came from. He followed the sound and soon he found Barlow standing on the side of the hill playing a violin. The strings of his bow were snapping and flying around him.

The music moved into Jack Brown, right into the centre of him, and he was possessed to drop to the ground on all fours. He felt in himself the spirit of the rabbit he had killed for their dinner and he leapt between tussocks of grass and was drawn on and on around the hill by the amber pools of light that appeared in front of him. He stood up then and felt himself to be a man complete, and around him was all of nature and he was nature's offspring.

The music stopped and the silence was sudden and serious. He sat on the ground. His legs looked to him like fallen trunks and he felt the curve of the earth beneath him. He craned his neck to the part of the sky directly above him and a tear rolled down his cheek. He did not feel it coming but he caught it on the end of his finger and raised it to the sky like some offering. In it he could see prisms of light and there were prisms opening all around him.

He stood up and looked for Barlow. He could see him on the top of the hill and began to walk towards him. He held up his arms to wave to him and Barlow began to yell. The sound coming from him was warped, like he was speaking underwater. Jack Brown walked closer. And then he heard him.

Where are the fucking women?
he yelled.
Jack Brown, where are the fucking women?

Jack Brown knew where the women were, he knew where to find them, and soon they were riding their horses unsaddled towards them. When they reached the end of Old Road Jack Brown could not even remember calling the horses or mounting them.

You are a fucking hero, Jack Brown
, shrieked Barlow as he galloped past him.

A wake of air folded around Jack Brown and he pushed his own horse into an echoing gallop. He heard it then, the earth disturbed and compacting as they rode, all of untold time beneath them.

AFTER THREE DAYS of walking, Jessie could find no more water. The labyrinth of rock had given way to thick scrub that cut her as she walked. Her skin itched as though she had been bitten by thousands of insects. Lumps appeared on her hands and her feet, blisters upon blisters. If she'd had a needle or some sterile thing she would have pierced them, neatly and one by one, and let the fluid drain out of them. But she did not have a needle so she ran her jagged nail under them and broke the skin and watched the claggy liquid inside of them ooze out. She could not allow her feet to become infected. The broken skin drew dirt to it and her boots were containers for food that she had collected. They were too small now for her swollen feet anyway.

She marvelled that there was any excess moisture in her body, any water to spare, water enough to swell her feet or rise in blisters.

She found shade.

Her hunger was gone but her thirst was everything. She picked out the berries from her boot. They stung against the cracked skin of her lips so she tried to place the berries on her tongue although it hurt to open her mouth wider. She chewed and chewed them to create moisture.

All of it felt like waiting and there was no clear path to take and she missed her companion. The sun was disorienting and took up all of the sky, and the bush was growing denser the higher she climbed. But still she was lucid enough to know the danger of her own thirst and that all day she had been stumbling. The ground beneath her was not a steady thing. Each step was uncertain and her feet seemed to sink through layers of dirt. She wished that days before she had filled her boots with water.

She walked on, barefoot, her gun strapped to her back, her boots hanging around her neck from their laces.

WHEN SHE DISCOVERED footprints she doubted what she saw. She thought at first that she was tracking herself, but then she measured them against her own foot and discovered they were not the same print, they were smaller.

She followed the footprints until she reached a plateau and then she saw that the plateau opened out to a clearing. She crouched low in the bush and searched beyond it. She could make out a holding yard. It was made of cut branches woven together in a circle, designed to keep horses and cattle, but she could see no creature in it.

She heard a whistling sound and flattened herself under the bush. Looking out again, she saw a dog.

She moved along the ground as she had seen snakes and goannas do in the mountains, and hid herself behind a tree. She peered out. A boy was standing in the clearing. He was just a child standing there next to his dog. The dog's ears pricked up. The boy said,
What is it, Ned? What is it?

The dog was still growling and edging closer to where Jessie hid but the boy was standing firm in the clearing.

Go get it, Ned—go get it!

And when she saw the dog come running in her direction she stepped out and yelled,
Down, Ned, sit down!

Who's there?
said the boy.

The dog was still barking so she stepped out into the clearing. The boy moved closer and raised his gun and she said,
Don't shoot me, kid.

Who are you?
he said.

My name is Jessie
.

The boy stood with his gun pointing at her and the dog ran to his side.

Put your gun down.

It was weeks or more since she had seen another human and so much longer since she had seen a boy. They regarded each other and she could see the beauty of his form, as elegant as anything she had ever seen, mountain, river, rampart or tree. And as the boy and the dog stood visibly disbelieving at what they were seeing—
a woman—
she wondered as she approached if beauty was just the thing itself or made more beautiful by the space around it.

Fucking Jesus, Ned. It's some kind of woman.

Mind your tongue
, she said, and laughed. As if she was one to say that.

Sorry, miss
, said the boy, and then the dog began to bark in a frenzy and the boy knelt down beside him and rubbed him under the chin which made the dog quiet.

Kneeling there he said,
What brings you here?

She knelt down too and didn't think much of it and just said,
The same things, I expect, that brought you.

The boy led her to his camp, which was near a waterhole, and it was the best camp she had ever seen. There were rocks and boulders that formed like honeycomb and grottos big enough to stand in. She could see that some of them were already lined with bedding and there were branches wedged into corners with things hanging from them—clothes and bridles.

There are five more of us
, said the boy,
but they are not here now. They are all off selling horses. And miss, it is better that you don't tell anyone that we are here because we like things as they are and you are the first to have found us. We have all that we need here and there'll be more when they get back, you'll see, 'cause they'll bring supplies. There'll be johnny cakes with golden syrup and Bill cooks things the best on the fire, like pumpkin and roo and fish from the creek. And when they come back they'll bring more oranges, too, and limes, 'cause Joe says if we don't eat 'em our teeth'll fall out—and Joe says that there are no tooth fairies here, we do not believe in 'em. Who would? And we've made a garden, too, but that's on the other side of the creek, 'cause it was bringing in too many roos and creatures on this side. More than we would want to eat or kill, miss. More than we would want to eat or kill.

They made a fire together that night. The boy gave her an orange and it was lit up by the fire like the brightest orb and he said,
There are only two left but they will be back soon and there will be more
. She shared the orange with the boy and it was the best she had ever tasted. The dog sat between them and he had calmed right down but lifted his head up occasionally and looked at her and then his head sank down meekly on his paws.
Don't mind Ned, miss. He's never seen a woman who is grown
. And she laughed because although she was a woman who was grown she felt no different to the boy or as the boy must have felt—happy to have found someone to share an orange and a fire at the summit of the mountain.

They gazed at the fire and they saw all things in it, creatures of the earth and creatures of the air, and they took turns at naming what they saw or guessing what hybrid that creature could be.

The sky was vast and clear and hung above them, revealing stories in its constellations for anyone who looked. And as the fire dwindled they did look up and they recognised some of its stories and some they did not know but told anyway, making the stars their own. It was the roof of their world and they were at ease with their world, looking up and feeling that they had explored great distances in the universe that night, all the while sitting by the dwindling fire.

They saw a girl spinning. Her hair was like a comet's tail, splitting against the sky. And when they blinked they could both see the thousand smaller stars that made the detail of her collar and a thousand more that made the buttons and seams from her wrists to her elbows. Hair and lace collars and buttons all made of stars.

As the girl was spinning, a Master of Menace bore down from the west, and his cape was made of darkness, not of stars. He threw back his cape and from his boots he drew a knife and launched it through the night, aiming at the girl who was still spinning.

And then out of the night a lasso fell around him and the girl got away and circled her opponent on her dappled horse. She circled him and then she did a handstand and the boy and Jessie saw all of this playing across the sky until they finally lost her when she flipped off her horse and tore out of their view.

What did you do down there, miss, with all of your days?

Rustled horses and cattle mainly.

Rustlin'—you mean stealin'?

Plain and simple. Horses and cattle, both. We'd bring them in, rebrand them and sell them on the other side of the mountains.

I'll be sure to tell Joe that
, said the boy.

And then he said,
You know we're a gang, miss. Me and Joe and the others. And you been rustlin'. I'll be sure to tell Joe.

DAYS AND DAYS passed and the boy kept saying,
They'll be back soon, miss, they'll be back.
All of his talking was like a mad little tick and she began to worry for them, Joe, Bill and the others. She imagined them, hungry as thieves.

Jessie and the boy set themselves jobs to keep their minds off the others'absence. They tidied the camp and chopped wood. They waded across the waterhole to the green garden where everything grew beautifully in rows—spinach and lettuce and rhubarb, and pumpkin vines that had been cordoned off with string. The whole thing was fenced off with pieces of chicken wire tied together with twine. Attached to sticks stuck into the ground were tins made into propellers that whirred in the wind.
We made them to keep the birds away
, said the boy. She asked the boy whose idea it was to grow their food and he said,
That was Joe. He is the oldest one here. He is sixteen.

More days passed and Jessie began to wonder if it was just going to be her and the boy and the dog forever, and if something had happened to the rest of them. And she worried more for them when she turned her mind to all the things that can happen droving horses and selling them. She did not tell the boy her concerns. But by the way he was fidgeting, she guessed he was thinking the same thing.

It was half dark when she was woken by a vibration in the earth like an earth tremor and it soon heralded a great cavalcade of horses and then the sighs of their riders dismounting.

She watched them from her bed, which was a cave in the rock, and she could see the riders all drawing nearer the fire where the boy was waiting. She could see from their silhouettes that all of them were lean and some of them were as tall as saplings, and they all stood gently together, and they all bent down to embrace the boy. Then the one she took to be Joe lifted the boy onto his back and jigged him around the fire until they were all laughing.

When she rose the sun was high in the sky. The boy was unloading supplies into the camp kitchen, which was another cave with its opening on the ground. The cave was deep enough to stand up in and the gang had built shelves, balancing them on rocks and sticks, and on the shelves were cans of things and things in sacks. Hessian bags covered the opening of the cave and some of them were rolled up and tied and the boy passed supplies under to someone on the other side.

The boy said,
Jessie, this is Bill
.
Bill is the best cook on the mountain.

Bill, standing behind the rolled-up hessian, looked through it but at the ground and just said,
Hello
, and went back to arranging things on the shelves.

Jessie wandered around the camp and saw signs of its inhabitants that were not there before. Boots kicked off outside the caves, saddles propped up off the ground and ropes in circles in the dirt. And then walking into the clearing she saw that while Joe and the others may have sold horses they had brought back a dozen more. The horses in the holding yard were wild; kicking and bucking and biting, they were trying to establish who ruled in the yard and beyond. She observed them all with a distant curiosity, wild creatures fighting, until she saw what she wished she would see. Houdini was in there among them, more ragged than she had last seen him, but still rearing up like any belligerent stallion.