‘I think,’ I said slowly, that I might have killed him the moment I came up with him.’
I don’t know whether he heard that or not. As I have said, he was living his own private hell and I doubt whether it made any difference what I said. I was merely his confessor, and only because I happened to be there and had problems of my own.
‘It was ‘bout six in the morning when I went down to the blacks’ quarter to get Weeli. I was running a new fenceline and I wanted Weeli and two of the boys. But he wasn’t there. Father had come for him ‘bout two hours back. I found the old man in his den, a bottle of whisky in front of him and his eyes bleary with drink and lack of sleep.’ He paused for breath, licking his lips, his tongue coming out but no moisture there. ‘He lied to me,’ he went on slowly. ‘That’s what got my dander up right at the outset. I knew very well Weeli hadn’t gone walkabout.’
He found some saliva, licked his lips again, speaking fast now: ‘It took me the better part of an hour to get the truth out of him and by then I was so darned mad I’d have killed McIlroy with my bare hands — if he’d still been around. It took me six days — six days on a camel to catch up with him. It’s a long ride from Jarra Jarra here, the days burning hot, the nights beginning to cool. Autumn, y’see. It was March. All that time to think what I’d do if ever I caught up with him. Lucky for me it rained, the tracks of that old Austin truck of his showing quite clearly wherever the sand was soft.’
He stopped there, staring in space. ‘At the end of six days’ riding camel the desire to kill the man was overlaid by a lot of other things — the loneliness, the feeling of being lost at times, like travelling in a vacuum. And when it came to the moment … when I was standing here, confronting him … all I could think of was water. I hadn’t had any water for more than twenty-four hours; all the way from the Stock Route I hadn’t found a single soak. I was down there in the sand, lapping it up, the camels bellowing. And the blarney of the man, that damned tongue of his pouring out excuses, explanations, encouraging me to believe that it would all turn out for the best. He and I, we’d go on together. No need for the camels now. And we’d return rich. His Monster would solve everything.’
He gave the ghost of a laugh, half amused, half cynical. ‘Instead of killing him I went to sleep in the middle of his monologue, too damned tired even to give him the hiding that would have got some of the hate out of my system.’
He paused again there, and then after a moment he said quietly, in a flat, even voice: ‘It was still there, y’see — the hate I mean — all ready to explode inside me the moment that shot woke me.’
‘You buried the body?’
He nodded. ‘In soft sand at the edge of the rira here. A sort of natural grave between two exposed edges of rock. Then Weeli and I started back. I got the Austin almost to Lake Disappointment. But the axle bust. There wasn’t much petrol left anyway. I dumped the old bus there and we made it back to Jarra Jarra by camel, travelling at night so nobody would see us. Father dealt with Weeli — made him swear never to tell a soul what had happened. Did it at the sacred place of his ancestors down in the Watersnake country. And then the cave-in — the last hope gone. After that the old man started drinking in earnest. McIlroy had broken him anyway. I got the hell out into the army. There was talk, of course. But nothing more. Four months had passed, the tracks covered by the time the police found that vehicle. And then the war, and we were overseas — boys from the outstations getting killed and captured. Mcllroy’s death wasn’t important any more.’ His voice faded, his eyes staring blankly. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d killed him the moment I saw him strutting towards me. Other times I try to make believe I never rode into the desert after him. The first would have been more honest. The second is what I’ve tried to live. Then Westrop, those rumours … after thirty years. I had to come.’
‘Why?’
He looked at me with a puzzled frown. ‘To see if it was true, of course. I didn’t know. After all those years I couldn’t be sure I really had killed him. Burma. Hospital, the old man’s death. It was in the Journal of course. It was all there, just as I had told it to him. But once I’d burned those pages … And then Janet’s mother, the years of trying to rebuild and make something of the station. It faded, y’see. It wasn’t real. Just something I’d read.’ And then haltingly: ‘The old man, y’see — out of his mind. You can’t live with a thought like that.’ There was perspiration on his brow, his face twitching and the effort of trying to put it all into words too much for him, his whole frame shivering.
‘And now?’
‘Now I know.’ His voice was back to a whisper. ‘Now I can’t fool myself any more. What I did — it finished him, broke him completely.’
‘The body, I mean — you found it?’
‘Not the body.’ He shook his head. ‘Not even the skeleton. He was just carrion as soon as the sand had blown off him, and the wedge-tails and the ants, they picked him clean. All that was left was a heap of bones, but lying exactly where I remembered, and of course it all came back to me, then. No room for doubt or self-deception any more.’
Silence and my head dropping on to my chest, my eyes closing; the rustle of sand grains moving, the heat winds stirring the desert. I should have said it didn’t matter any more. I should have encouraged him, given him the support he needed. But I was too tired, too bone-weary to care. What the hell did it matter after all these years? I was drifting into sleep, but not yet losing consciousness, the silence nagging. ‘And now,’ I muttered. ‘Now you’ve found him, what are you going to do?’
He didn’t answer, the silence heavy between us so that I was forced back to consciousness, my eyes open. He hadn’t moved, his head still framed by that strange motif on die rock wall, behind him — his eyes open and staring vacantly, his breathing shallow. He looked like death. It should have warned me. But I hadn’t come all this way to worry about a man who had died thirty years ago. I was thinking of Janet and Jarra Jarra and what a real big strike could do to get them out of the mess they were in. I thought, God help me, it was die future, not the past, that mattered, and so I said, ‘Well, what about Mcllroy’s Monster? Does it exist or doesn’t it?’ I thought it would help to concentrate his mind on something practical.
Silence still and I had to repeat the question before he turned his head and looked at me, his eyes still vacant as though fixed on some far distant horizon. Slowly he shifted his position, groping in the hip pocket of his trousers. ‘That’s something I shall never know.’ And he handed me a worn leather wallet. ‘I took that from Mcllroy’s body.’ And then he said something I didn’t understand till much later: ‘If it exists and if you find it, pray to God for guidance. This poor country has been raped too often by greedy whites and that — that Monster — belongs to them, to the aborigine of the desert.’ And he added softly, ‘I would like to think that my boyhood dream could be made a reality. Yes, I would like to think that, very much. I had it all planned — Jarra Jarra a nature reserve, the goodness of the land gradually restored and the blacks free to live their natural, self-sufficient lives.’ His breath came in a sigh. ‘It was just a dream, and dreams fade y’know — with age and the passage of time. But you’re young. You can still make it a reality.’ And then, looking at me very directly with those startling blue eyes: ‘Any man who uses that for his own ends will suffer a violent death. Or else he’ll end up with blood on his hands. I don’t know why I know that, but I do.’