Coolemon was in the south-west of the state. Grey nomads travelling through the town were sometimes heading south-west to Adelaide and then across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth; or turning north to Broken Hill and from there, going north or west into the red heart of the continent. Their caravans trundled along the desert tracks as if they were native to the landscape.
Harrigan followed the Hume Highway south, stopping for fast food not far past Yass. Not long after, he turned off the highway onto the back roads and began heading west into the sun. The road was a single carriageway lined with old eucalyptus trees, their leaves gleaming in the hot afternoon light. Cattle trucks and local farmers were the only hazards. He drove through the old rural towns that had followed on white settlement, their main streets making up the highway: vistas of old courthouses, abandoned bank buildings and closed stores. Silent pubs stood with their doors open and their high verandas shadowing the footpath. In these towns, the war memorials stood in the main street, silent stone soldiers mourning over their guns.
As the hours passed, the road grew more straight. Flocks of grey apostle birds foraged in the red dirt either side of the bitumen. Crows, their densely black feathers glistening in the sun, settled on the roadkills. The dry, empty pastures were sapped by the drought, reduced to a scraped and pale gold marked by scattered trees and low bush-covered hills against the horizon.
The kilometres passed without incident. Despite this, he felt a sense of unease. It had been too simple, almost effortless, swapping cars and getting out on the road. But even if there was something wrong, all he could do was drive on.
Some five hours after he had left Campbelltown behind, Harrigan drove into the large, straggling town of Coolemon. He stopped at the police station. The duty sergeant had known him during his time there and was welcoming. The backup was on standby; they would be waiting for his call whenever they were needed. Harrigan accepted the sergeant’s invitation to a meal and spent the occasion talking about the cricket.
By the time he left the station, it was growing dark. About a kilometre out of town, a state forest lined the roadside, the casuarinas closing in like thinned-out human figures. Eventually open pastures took their place. Harrigan opened his window to the quiet outside. Stillness stretched to the horizon. There was a full moon, scorching the surrounding paddocks to an incandescent ash. Driving in this solitary moonlit darkness, Harrigan felt a free man. In a rare moment of equilibrium, he was at ease with himself.
Eventually, he turned off the bitumen road onto dirt. Pausing at the turn, he thought he heard a car in the distance ahead of him. A farmer on his way home. He went on, his headlights illuminating the roadside scrub. Ahead, he saw the shadows of the red gums lining Naradhan Creek. He crossed the narrow bridge and drove through Yaralla’s open gate, startling an owl roosting on a fencepost. It disappeared into the scrub with the slow, silent beat of its powerful wings, its pale feathers luminous in the white light.
Harrigan drove up the track and into Harold’s yard. A frantic barking greeted him when he got out of the car. A light was shining brightly above the farmhouse’s back door. Harold was standing on the veranda, washing his knives at an outside sink.
‘Quiet!’ Harold ordered the dog and she sat down. ‘Don’t mind Rosie. She gets excited.’
‘She doesn’t bother me. How are you, mate? It’s good to see you.’
‘Could be better. My hands are a mess. I just killed a lamb. I’ve had this fella in the shed for a couple of days, calming him down. I was going to share the meat with Ambro, but I thought you might want a roast dinner while you’re here.’
‘What’s wrong with your hands, Harry?’
For an answer, Harold held them out, palms upwards. They were still covered with the transparent antiseptic dressings. Even where partly hidden by the lamb’s blood, they were badly burned and blistered deep into the skin.
‘How did that happen?’
‘It’s what Stuart’s growing here. The tobacco did that to me. Come inside and I’ll show you. I’ll just wash the blood off and get cleaned up.’
‘Can you work with those hands?’
‘The doctor gave me some tablets. They help. I didn’t do anything much today. I took some sleeping pills the doc gave me last night. They knocked me out till almost midday. Killing the lamb was okay. It’s quick, and I’ve just taken some tablets. Driving’s not fun.’
‘Your tatts, mate.’
Harold had taken off his bloodstained shirt and was standing naked to the waist. The bright light intensified the deep colours and intricate patterns marked on his skin. Harrigan hadn’t known that Ambrosine was using Harold’s body as a canvas.
‘Do you like them?’ Harold asked.
‘You could win a few awards with those. She’s signed them. Ambrosine only signs her best tattoos.’
Harold put on another shirt and the tattoos disappeared. He wrapped his slaughtering and butchering knives in a leather pouch.
‘She likes working on me. I don’t have much bare skin left now. Come on, girl.’
He led Rosie out across the yard to her enclosure. Once inside her kennel, she settled down on her blanket.
‘Do you want to put your car in the garage? Who knows? Maybe it’ll rain.’ Harold laughed.
‘Times are bad, Harry.’
‘Wait till you see the place in the daylight. It’ll break your heart. Come into the kitchen once you’ve put your car away. Have you had anything to eat?’
‘Yeah, I ate back in town.’
‘We’ll have a beer then.’
The farmhouse at Yaralla had the sense of time stopped. The kitchen was a large room with a window that looked out to the north-east. An ancient wood stove stood next to an electric one, now almost as much a museum piece as its companion. When Harold’s mother, a woman from a family of wealthy Victorian graziers, had cooked here she had always had others to help her do it; sometimes young Aboriginal girls sent from the home at Cootamundra, sometimes white girls from other homes. They had slept in the room beside the washhouse and spent the rest of their time cleaning the house and washing basketloads of dirty laundry.
Harold put his knives away in a drawer. He opened two beers and then sat at the table without speaking. Harrigan had come to know Harold well during his years out here and he knew there was no point in rushing him. Tonight, he was tense, fatigued.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do really,’ he said at last. ‘Every day you wake up, there’s no rain. You wonder if it’s ever going to end. Then something like this happens.’
He looked at his hands. Harrigan could only sidestep something so uncontainable as despair.
‘What’s going on out here, Harry?’
Harold’s tobacco lay on the table. He picked it up, rolled a cigarette and lit it.
‘Come with me. I’ll show you something.’
They walked through to the front of the house. Pale incandescent lights lit the hallway. Worn carpet runners covered the floor. Harold led him to the front sitting room where he turned on the light. The furniture in this room was old and in its time had been expensive, from the years when the property had been profitable. The windows looked onto the veranda and, beyond, to the gardens that Harold’s mother had once cultivated but which were now mostly dead.
‘You see this room.’ Harold looked around as if peopling it. ‘This is my house. I’ve lived here all my life. A bit more than a week ago, Stuart was sitting in this room with this Jerome and that Edwards woman, drinking my whisky and treating me like I was dirt. They were going to do things with my property without even talking to me about it. Next thing I hear, they’re both dead.’
He went to an old writing desk and opened it. He took out four plastic bags containing crop specimens and put them on the coffee table.