Carpentaria

Angel Day always claimed the spot […] was the best place they had ever lived, because all she had to do was walk across the road to the rubbish dump, and there she could get anything her heart desire—for free. She thought the dump was magnificent, as anyone dirt poor would. The way she talked, you would have thought she was a very rich woman, and it was nothing for her to walk back and forth to the dump two dozen times a day to cart back pieces of sheet iron, jerry cans, bits of car bodies, lengths of rope, logs, plastic, discarded curtains, and old clothing. […] Diligently, she undertook the chore of checking for leaks, making alterations, choosing the right bits and pieces from her pile of accumulated junk which she leant, tied or stitched to the original blankets, until she ended up with an igloo made of rubbish.

No one imagined Norm Phantom rushing out, carrying the fatted calf on his shoulders as soon as he got the news that his son was coming home. There was no use for some angelic child rushing to tell the patriarch, See, the prodigal son was coming, walking if you please, through the spinifex, over the rise. ‘Yep! Time will tell,’ Mozzie sarcastically quipped. ‘And pigs have wings.’ Will would reach Desperance in his own good time, so let the light burn in the house where a fully grown man only had time to recognize six of his seven children. The house with a slogan: A man gets sick of running for his kids—I run for none of the buggers now. ‘It’s like that is it?’ Mozzie mouthed the words, remembering asking Norm when he heard news of the rift between father and son. What did he say back?

See! Well none of that. That never happened to Norm and he passed all of that on to Will. So! Will has a good way with nature, and all of the natural things, except he is not too good with human nature. That boy was in one hell of rush to throw fuel on man-made adversaries. If it had anything to do with mankind, he had the knack to rub it hard, right up the wrong way. His father was like that too. And if you thought the falling out with his father was not a good thing—you are wrong about that. It was a blessing compared to what he had gone around accomplishing in his life to date. Oh! Poor me—what a history. This lad was writing memory with a firestick that made lightning look dull.

It was just no use trying to feel remorse or letting others carry their war, his war, an inheritance that belonged to him, as much as he belonged to it. He could only give a clinical glance at the proudly worn combatant scars of his relatives when they boasted of the battles in the middle of Desperance. Will carried no scars, only the dark brown birthmark straight down his left leg. The old people recorded the reappearance of familiar old family scars in the newborn, so that four hundred years worth of events could be remembered in stories of ground battles, sea battles, and not forgetting the air battles either, they claimed. […]

They said Will’s scar came from such a battle that took place in the skies with sea eagle spirits over the Gulf sea, long before he was born.

‘My Mum,’ whispered Bala. ‘Well! Her name was Hope and me Dad is Will Phantom.’

Norm stopped eating. He placed the fish back into the bucket. He looked hard at the boy. He did not know Will had a child but then, why would he know anything? Who told him anything anymore? Of all the things Will had to go and do to the family. ‘I am going to kill that bastard when I see him.’ Yes, Norm decided on the spot, Will had gone too far this time. The old hostilities jumped from his heart into his head. Instantly, there was no sign of Will in the child anymore. Only the family resemblances from the other side stood out, clear as day, he was surprised he had not seen it straightaway. […] He was staring at the child as though he was looking Old Midnight in the face.

Thinking about Bala, Norm grew more positive about his own circumstances. How could he explain Bala? It occurred to him that Bala was in the realm of God’s providence. And he suddenly realized why. Of course. His fingers snapped automatically: an action of forgotten years which surprised even him at his age. He knew it. He would have to look after the boy because the boy was alone, there was no Will and no Mother either. He now understood why the child kept coming by himself and avoided answering any requests to bring his father. He saw the child’s face looking out to sea, something of Will in his face, something unexplainable, the look of fortitude which belonged in the faces and eyes of seasoned soldiers.

Looking past reality, Valance saw another landscape transposed on his mind, a perfect world he had temporarily created, although it did happen. The hinterland people were saying, ‘Yes sir, listen to the bell, the angelus bell, Angelus Domini,’ and walking like pilgrims, like the holy folk would, coming into town.

Praise men of ambition who strive for newfangled ideas like reconciliation in old Australia, for Valance with his pricked conscience used every opportunity as town clerk, to make town campers feel like they were a part of the broader community. Even though Gordie was not their neighborhood watch, Valance considered the community service was available for all folks. Yet, the longer the bell rang, the more people on both sides of the Pricklebush wars were declaring from their respective sides of town, how they were going to destroy that bell once and for all one day, as soon as they got the chance.

‘You mob,’ old Midnight said, following Will in his readiness to cast off, ‘talk all the time about some kind of new, contemporary world. New world—Blah! to that. What contemporary world? It’s the same world as I live in, and before that, and before that. No such thing as a contemporary world.’ Why should someone old like himself comprehend Uptown having reason enough for killing and burning amongst their own jellyfish white people? ‘I understand our mob having a go at each other,’ he said, referring to the old wars. ‘We got to fight each other until one day we might git sick and tired of it.’ What he really meant, Will knew, was that one side must give up and go away. It was ultimate solution that neither side could resolve. Which would be the loser? It was the only way the fighting of the last four hundred years would finish.

This was kingfisher country. A lone, deep-sea blue kingfisher dashed across the sky in fright. Will watched its path across to the hills. Its flight was part of the larger ancestral map which he read fluently. He does not have to speak to ask the spirits to keep the birds away from the mines. See! Mine waste everywhere. The grounds were covered in contaminated rubble. Make them go back to the river. Will had always been puzzled why the birds flocked to the mine.

Whenever he saw so many birds around the mine, it raised a lot of questions for him. When would they realise the hazards of going there? How many evolutions would it take before the natural environment included mines in its inventory of fear? He and Old Joseph had sat in the hills and watched the water birds flock to the chemical-ridden tailings dams, where the water was highly concentrated with lead.

Fate and precious moments are tied up together, and as the saying goes, What goes around comes around: the yellow-haired man tripped. Instantly, his head was split open at the temple by a rock that had, up to that moment, lain on the ground, embedded in soil that was thousands of seasons old, untouched by humankind since the ancestor had placed it in this spot, as if it had planned to do this incredible thing.

Rock and roll, it was unbelievable to have seen what happened. Will had been so close, waiting to take what rightfully he claimed, and the man was running straight for him, and only Will saw what was about to happen, saw the rock was ready, waiting for this moment. Instantaneously, it was as natural a reaction as you would expect, but he felt cheated you know.

When the explosions stopped, the Fishman’s men picked themselves up from the ground. They agreed that only the greatness of the mighty ancestor had saved them. It was a miracle they were still alive after the earth shook so violently underneath them, they had thought it would go on forever. A heavy red fog of dust and smoke hung in the air as they moved away, their visibility limited to just a few metres. The fine dust fell slowly, and when it settled on those men who were trying to regain a sense of the enormity of what had happened, they took on the appearance of the earth itself. One by one, camouflaged by dust, they began spiriting themselves away, quickly, carefully, as dust covered their tracks, back to the lagoon of the dancing spirits.

[…] Will Phantom gained a reputation as being a violent person. Someone who would strike another as would a virus, was how Will Phantom was interpreted through the bat and dog story. The retelling of Will in Uptown was as vivid and as crystal clear as hearing that original, fatal Thud! on the dog’s head, through those reliving it all again. And again: It sounded just like this, Thud! Will remembered when he was a kid how he responded to the talk of the town. It made him feel destined to be out of kilter with the neighbors but he loved his persona. For fun he ran up and down Uptown singing ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.’ So, whatever he was suspected of, and suspicion fell on him far too easy, it was because he was always seen through eyes tainted by this one significant story.

‘So how come you’re still here?’ Will asked, clearly puzzled by the barman’s seemingly clear-minded decision to stay, then, seeing the ropes tied to the bar, he understood. It was actually true, Will thought, remembering the women who told love stories about Lloydie worshipping a mermaid locked in wood. They said it was a true romance and he thought they were joking. Of course, he was staying with his mermaid. Will looked at the wooden planks, then he had to look away. Had the wind affected his vision? For some strange reason, he saw movement inside the wood. There was a full-grown woman inside the wood, moving like a trapped fish, as though she were trying to swim free.

People say when a humble man really listened and looked past the obvious, then he might fly with music into the unknown. Norm’s voice rolled on like waves themselves pouring out of the tales of what he had seen at sea and his fathers before him. So, Will’s ear by the wall heard it was alright to die a lonely death at sea because a cyclone will always show you the way home. Those lost souls lying down there in their lonely watery grave, many fathoms deep, were thrown up from under the sand, like seaweed plucked from the floor of the sea in a giant waterspout of the ancestral serpent.

Remember the real people of the Gulf, those poor black souls living on heartbreak and worries in the Pricklebush because they know all about cyclones, unlike those copycat Uptown dolce vita type of people sitting in comfortable armchairs expecting to acquire their ancestral ties with the sea by sitting on their posteriors watching television programs, and never going out to sea on any occasion to pay their respects, like the old people who were the backbone of the Pricklebush who did not mind paying their dues, and will tell you cyclones don’t come from nowhere, because there is plenty of business going on when cyclones come onto the country out of the rooftop of the world, like what is going on outside now from the most powerful creation spirits, who come down out of the skies like a tempest when they start looking for Law breakers.

And Will Phantom was right to think he was lucky, leaning his skinny body out of the building, barely holding on to the doorway, and not caring if he fell, because any second he knew he could simply let go, with full certainty of falling straight into the destiny he had prescribed for himself. He had not figured fate, when the top floor under his feet suddenly moved. The floorboards had been shaken so violently, he was sent flying into the floodwaters. He hit the water hard, went under into the billowing yellow waters, where he rolled blindly in vacuo with the dead of the deep, before being returned in a frenzy of breathlessness to the surface.