Tracks of the missing, p.7
Tracks of the Missing, page 7
We creep through the undergrowth making as little noise as possible. Thudump, thump, thump; my heart beats loudly in my ears and vibrates out through the forest, muffling my hearing. I notice with horror that Grandfather has somehow unhooked his hunting knife from its pocket in his pack. I try to control my breathing. I wish I had brought a hunting knife too. Instead I grab a thick stick from the ground and grip it in my hands. This has all got pretty serious pretty quick.
It is eerily silent. All the birdlife has been scared away by the racket. The insects are silent. My palms are sweaty. I follow Grandfather forward, shallow breathing.
The trees begin to thin out. I realise with relief that we are on an open dirt track.
‘An old firebreak that must run through the park,’ Grandfather whispers, more to himself than to me. ‘That makes sense.’
It doesn’t make any sense to me.
‘They might have had to travel the back road into the park if that fire was over the road. Maybe they never reached either camp site. That’s why there was not any sign of them there.’
I bend down, instantly finding the bus tracks in the soft dirt.
‘Why would they …’
The trees at the edge of the dirt track rattle. There’s another blood-curdling wail.
I freeze. Grandfather stays still, moving only his eyes, scanning the tree line; his hand grips the hunting knife. Twigs crack. My heart beats loudly.
9
CONNECTION
There’s a hiss from the bushes. Feathers flap. I move forward, taking care with each footfall not to make a sound. The fact that the owner of the hiss doesn’t know we are here is the only advantage we have.
I realise now I can’t be second-guessing myself. We are here. They are out there. We can’t let them face whatever it is alone. No matter how out of my depth I feel, I’d never forgive myself if anyone got hurt. I put my finger to my lips and crouch down low. I slowly, silently spread the lowest branches of the shrub, making sure they do not even rustle with the movement. I peer in.
A pair of curlew birds are taking turns to jump towards the trunk of a tree. The curlew bird lets out a scream and pecks again, attempting to catch a cicada off the tree. The insect shrieks too. Together their cries make the wail I had thought was a monster. I feel anger surge through my body, annoyed that I had listened to the fairy stories of the old man, ashamed that I had been afraid.
‘The devil bird,’ Grandfather sighs, body relaxing. I almost laugh as my anger subsides to relief, although we still haven’t found the camp.
I know about the devil bird. An ironic name right now. We have been warned about the devil bird since we were little. The old people say they trick babies and young children into the bush with their screams. A tale to stop young children running off into the bush alone. It had kind of worked this time on us. It is not one of Grandfather’s imaginary Creation creatures at all, and it’s not a mass-student-murdering criminal.
I walk back to the dirt track, my grandfather trailing behind. I bend to look at the tyre tracks again. He studies the depth of the marks on each side. Grandfather squats down next to me and I take a moment to breathe deeply and steady my heart rate. ‘This way,’ he announces.
We walk along the track for what feels like a long time. The hot sun beats down on my face sending a trail of sweat dripping from my nose. I wipe it off and wish for a breeze. Too much time to think. Jenny and Brook know Country well enough. Both of them would have come out this way when they were little with family too. Why had they come out this way this time?
I look back at my grandfather; he has dropped further behind. He needs to rest and so do I. I don’t want to stop tracking but my head spins and my body feels weak. I need food.
‘Let’s stop,’ I say as I wait for him to catch up. ‘I’m starving.’
Grandfather gives me a disapproving look but I can tell he needs to rest too. I point to a tree trunk in the shade by the road; I motion that we should sit. I dig deep into my bag to find the snacks that Mum has packed.
‘It is getting late,’ Grandfather points to the sun getting lower in the sky. ‘You need to eat quickly. We don’t have much time especially if we are trying to get you back before dark.’
I know that more sharply than he could know. The game tonight is the only reason I didn’t ride out here the second I heard the news, looking for Jenny and Brook. This kind of opportunity is once in a lifetime. But I am ashamed I’d even thought to put my aspirations before the lives of the mob in the bus. Ashamed even more since it could be my fault.
Now, though part of me feels like we are out on a wild-goose chase, a deeper part of me tells me we aren’t. We don’t even know if they have been found by someone else. I hope that Officer Thomas would call us with the news – if he could even get reception. I wonder if Grandfather would get a sense when they are found like he has one about them being lost?
Looking at my grandfather’s muscled but frail body, hunched over his sandwich, I know it is important that I am here with him. I’m angry that my uncles left him behind. Even though he is not as strong or fast as he was as a young man, my grandfather had set the pace and I had been the one keeping up for most of the morning until now. Maybe my uncles asked him to stay at home and he organised Officer Thomas without letting family know. Surely, my family wouldn’t leave him to go out bush himself and find his own way. I know better than to ask the old man. He is too proud to talk about his failing sight and slower body, let alone the disrespect my uncles would have shown if they did ignore him.
‘Tell me about this teacher we are looking for,’ Grandfather says as we scoff down our peanut butter and banana sandwiches. ‘What do you know about the other year twelves?’
I think hard about them. Our family is related to most of the blakfellas in town, one way or another, so that was an easy place to start.
‘Not much,’ I remind Grandfather. ‘Our mob for a start.’
Grandfather nods, pain and worry cross his face.
‘Brooklyn is related to us,’ Grandfather adds to the obvious information we both know. ‘And Jenny has family from out our way.’
‘Yep. I don’t think they had anything to do with this,’ I say thinking about my relatives. ‘Brooklyn’s too busy chasing her boyfriend around. That Asian fella in her grade, you know? Jenny’s one of the good ones.’
There is nothing average about her though. She is amazing. Kind, funny, deadly at sport and smart. Great dancer, even better kisser … Not that I want to share any of that with my grandfather.
‘Yeah, I agree,’ Grandfather says thoughtfully, connecting the information. ‘Any trouble brewing in between anyone … or anyone out at the station?’
I wonder how much my grandfather knows. How much he’d picked up from gossip after Michael’s brother’s death or how much he knew instinct way. Just thinking of Old Henry sends cold shivers down my spine. Maybe drowning was poetic justice.
I flick through the year 12s’ faces in my mind, trying to piece together the snippets of time in town schooling with them here. I don’t know them all well. Some groups in town just don’t mix. Grandad knew as well as anyone about the divide in the town. He grew up when blakfellas weren’t even allowed in the pub without a white person accompanying them. He told us stories of when they used to have to hide his light-skinned sister in shallow holes under the spinifex to keep her from being taken away by the police. Over time he’d even shared some of the ways the police used to target blakfellas for any crime in town and even beat a few real bad when they didn’t admit to something they’d been pinned for.
For us now, we just dealt with the leftover feeling passed down from grandparents on both sides of town. Nobody really liked to call each other racist or prejudiced, but there was definitely a divide between the farming families and the Aboriginal mob, the rich kids and the farming kids, the immigrants and the rest of town. Our History teacher one year had tried to teach us about intergenerational trauma – something about the pain of your Elders getting passed down to you. I kind of saw what she meant, families who were broken apart and torn from land back in the day, didn’t know how to deal with life in the new world. They’d seen their Country trampled by cattle, their family raped or massacred, their children stolen. They’d lived as second-class citizens without rights, their work unvalued or unpaid. That kind of stuff beats a person down. Some adults never grew up with their families but only in institutions so they didn’t know how to bring up their kids. Some people had so much anger that they turned to drink to dull the pain. All that stuff is witnessed by kids younger than me and they feel the trauma as raw as if it happened to them too. It made me have hope the day Kevin Rudd said sorry. Like a weight lifted off my shoulders to watch my granny cry and let go of some of that pain. Then the racist stuff started on social media and I knew that sorry was only the start of the journey. I’d stolen a car that night. I needed to be away from the world that could say such yucky things. I’d returned it later, after the bitter taste of racism had been blown out the window at 120 down the highway.
That’s why I kind of liked football. The same way. Wind in my hair sprinting down the green, ball bouncing in front of me. I can let all that go, you know, just focus on the moment. Out on the footy field we were all just the same.
‘There’s always some drama, Grandfather,’ I half smile. ‘It’s high school.’
I think harder about anyone’s connections to the station. I don’t know a lot about all that, being from out on community – only the secondhand gossip I get from the boys. I find it really hard to believe that any of the 12s have any connection to that at all. They certainly couldn’t have been involved with last night, but it gets me thinking about any motive a murderer, if it is even a murder, would have chasing any of the 12s out bush. If we do run into any murdering fugitive it’s likely to be an accident while they hide out bush … and the likelihood of that is almost non-existent in the millions of acres of red-dirt bushland. Thinking it through helps me feel calmer about one of the scenarios that had been playing on repeat in my head. Now I just had to worry about stranded and injured schoolmates … and Grandfather’s superstitions.
‘You know how old Mr Henry was selling sly grog out to the dry communities? Some of the under-age kids in town also go out there to get sly grog if they can’t get it in town. I know Rocky and Jefferey’s gang sometimes get their alcohol that way. Their parents are too strict to let them drink and they can’t be seen getting anyone to buy it for them from the bottlos; their families would kill them. Not any reason for any of them to be caught up in something more suspicious though I don’t think.’
I leave out my involvement. That I’d been there too. How Henry had dealt in more than black market liquor. How his drugs had led to Michael’s brother’s death. For a second I contemplate the possibility that someone might have bought some drugs or grog on camp. I picture them face down floating in the water like Michael’s brother had been.
‘Any pranksters in that class?’ Grandfather probes, eyes scrunched, watching me carefully as I answer. Perhaps he knows I am not telling him the whole truth.
‘Jefferey, Scotty, Rocky and Caleb I’d say,’ I reply, glad of the questions as they move me away from the dark images that were floating through my mind. I remember overhearing Jefferey and Scotty planning their upcoming graduation stunt. In this moment, I really hope we find them because if anyone was going to pull off putting all the classroom furniture on the roof of the school, it was those clowns.
Jefferey is short and stocky and he already helps his dad at the local mechanics shop. As well as fixing local vehicles and busted-up tourist cars, his dad gets the big mechanic parts for the stations and mines. He is a bit of a bully, not afraid to throw his weight around on the footy field either. There was a rumour a while back that Jefferey’s dad might be working with someone on the stations getting hard drugs up to sell around town. Although if we believed all the small town rumours then there’d be twenty bad things true about me. Not all of them would be wrong. I wish it had just been a rumour and I could just brush it away. Not the cold truth. I’d seen the evidence.
Rocky is another townie from my family’s end of town. His father works early morning shifts at the bakery. I was in town schooling when I was in year 7, can’t remember exactly what for, maybe my mum was giving birth to one of my little brothers, anyway Rocky and his mates put flour up on the office doors and classroom fans. It was hilarious watching the principal storm around the school, searching for the culprits and looking like a ghost in flour … until someone turned on the fan in our room and we all ran out coughing and laughing. Rocky hadn’t really thought through the prank enough though … they should have put it on their room fans too because it really narrowed down the search given there were only thirty flour-free students laughing at the rest of us.
‘I just don’t see why they would pull a prank out here. And even if they did, I can’t think how they’d get stuck out here because of it,’ I sigh, thinking hard. The food has helped me focus.
‘Any of them capable of doing something stupid that would put them all in danger?’ Grandfather prompts.
‘One of the year twelves is definitely a bully; I know a lot of kids in my year he’s beaten up,’ I reply, thinking about all the school rumours that might give Grandfather the clue he is searching for. ‘Maybe he hurt someone and they got stuck waiting for help? Or maybe Hannah … you know the girl that was involved in the hit and run? You remember, she was in the news and she got let off for good behaviour … or maybe her expensive lawyers did a good job!’
‘I know her. There were rumours when she was born that her mum had an affair with a blakfella from community. That mum was quickly married up to the Stockman farming family, if I remember rightly? Big money family,’ Grandfather reflects.
‘Come on, Grandfather,’ I say, pulling myself up and wiping the red dirt off my shorts. I offer a hand down to my grandfather. ‘We can talk and walk.’
I feel bad for rushing him as he grunts with the effort of pulling himself up. We both know what could be at stake.
‘Rumour was she was off her face on drugs or alcohol,’ I add to Grandfather’s memory. ‘They didn’t think to test a pretty, rich, white girl.’
‘We don’t know all the details, Dek. She was under-age, they might not have even thought about that or were waiting for her parents? Maybe those type of drug tests weren’t up here at the time,’ my grandfather defends the police. ‘We’d be no better than that woman jumping to assumptions back at the cliff. Most of the police mob out here are good, hardworking people.’
‘Well it smelt dirty to me,’ I spit. The thought of corruption and racism again bringing the bitter taste in my mouth. I change the subject, ‘Do you think they have the helicopters out looking yet?’
I want this over. I want to find Brooklyn and Jenny. I want to look over her body to make sure she is unhurt, to feel her arms around me … There is just enough time to get back to town in time for the match.
‘They’ll have a tough time seeing anything out here,’ Grandfather says, worry in his voice. ‘There are some patches of pretty thick bush around the rivers and waterholes, a few big hills too. Even in the sparse scrub it’ll be tough to spot anything from above. If that bus has been covered in red dust or they parked under a tree to get shade, those spotters will have a hard time seeing anything. Not to mention, this national park is a big area to cover. And looking near the campgrounds won’t necessarily get them near here anytime soon.’
That doesn’t fill me with confidence. After all, we are alone, in the very bushland that Grandfather is talking about. Grandfather brushes the loose twigs from his legs.
‘See that rock face over there in the distance?’ Grandfather asks, as though reading my mind. We continue walking at a steady pace as he points around. ‘That’s connected to the Creation songlines … we can follow that ridge to a deep, cool waterhole that is safe for drinking all year round. We are not lost, my grandson.’
The hot sun beats down on my head and back. Usually around this time, out bush for any other reason, we’d be lounging around in the shade of the big trees or floating around in a sheltered waterhole. It’s not like I haven’t run around in the dry desert heat before though. Sometimes when I was younger I would help my uncles out mustering on a station. I know the risk of dehydration out here and take another swig of my water bottle. There are stories of tourists being found dead out bush with water still in their bottle. You’re not meant to ration it; you’re meant to keep hydrated for as long as you can.
As we walk, the rough track takes us by a hill with crumbling sides. Rocks, eroded a long time past, litter the base of the hill. A long, deep shelf has been carved by the elements in one section. Not deep enough to really be called a cave but the shelf of rock creates a cool sanctuary beneath it. I look at the tyre tracks and wish again that we were in a troopy instead of trekking on foot through the bush. Some sections of the road are that eroded that it would have been slow work even with a vehicle. There must have been some rain out this way, unlike in community where we were still waiting for the dry to break. The long lead-up to the wet is always hot and dry – we all wait with anticipation and when the first rains come kids run from classrooms to dance and jump in the big, warm raindrops.
A flash of white catches my eye. I quickly turn my head, eyes squinted against the sharp light, steps faltering. My grandfather senses my change in pace and stops to watch and listen too. I motion him to stay quiet with a flick of my hand. My eyes rest on some ochre smudged onto the outer rock near the ledge of the shelf.
‘Thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye,’ I say aloud, realising that my heightened state had drawn my attention to the stark white contrast. I squish up my lips and pout them over in the direction, as us mob do instead of point. ‘Just over there.’
Grandfather looks in the direction I have indicated and walks over. I follow, enjoying the relief from the sun as we pass into the shade. It feels cool and still under the ledge. Grandfather places his hand against the cool rock. I notice that there are splatters of ochre paint all over the rock face. My family had taken me out to look at rock art before, special places to our people that even tourists didn’t usually go. My grandfather had said it was important to keep some places secret because when the white man came they would chip off rock art to send back as souvenirs or off to museums. When the land rights movement started, station workers would smash up rock to hide evidence of our history on the land. Sometimes in the early days, even our ancestors’ bones would be sent off to museums, sometimes without proper identification, to be locked in random storerooms and lost.
