‘And you’d better pick up that hat,’ Sam says.
Aubrey glances at the spot where Sam is pointing.
‘What hat?’ Aubrey asks, puzzled.
With lightning speed, Sam fires a shot that blows Aubrey’s hat off his head and lands it in the very place Sam was indicating.
‘That hat,’ Sam says. Then he looks Aubrey in the eye as he spins the pistol around his finger like a Wild West circus act, stopping the spin twice to aim the weapon threateningly at his target’s forehead before resuming the showy gunplay. Sam’s barefoot friends laugh at the gravedigger’s expense, but their elbow-nudging chuckles are silenced when the old Aboriginal man in the black and faded French admiral’s frock coat emerges from the path between the two rock walls.
Molly gasps. ‘Longcoat Bob,’ she whispers. The old man’s wild grey hair. So many lines across his face. The crevices in his cheeks are the cracks in all the rocks Molly saw along her journey into the deep country. Longcoat Bob’s country. The scarring across his chest. Each line of it a rapid river running through this treacherous paradise. The long fingers by his sides. The fingers that pointed at her grandfather all those years ago. The fingers that called him out. Stone heart, Bob said. Stone heart.
Molly turns to Yukio and whispers in his ear. ‘It’s Longcoat Bob, Yukio. He’s a medicine man. I’m gonna ask him to save you. He can save you, Yukio.’ She grips Yukio’s hand. She grips it to her chest. ‘Just hold on. Don’t go anywhere. Just hold on. Please. Please hold on.’
The old man pats Sam’s shoulder and that’s all that’s required to make the young man with the gun step back respectfully.
Longcoat Bob runs his deep and watery and grey eyes over the scene. The girl nursing the foreigner on the ground. The duffel bag filled with nuggets. The tall man with the knife in his hand.
He points at the duffel bag. ‘Them rocks,’ he says. And he speaks softly but so clearly that all the heads in the clearing, including Molly’s, turn towards him. ‘No good.’
‘I found those rocks myself,’ Aubrey Hook says. ‘I see no claims on them. They are mine to take as I please.’
Longcoat Bob studies the tall man’s face. Looks deep into those black eyes. Deep into that tired shadow. ‘Then you must carry all you own,’ he says. And he holds an open palm towards the bridge of eucalypt trunks stretching across the raging river. ‘Go.’
Aubrey Hook is temporarily stunned by the word. He said go, he tells himself. Walk out of here. Take your gold and leave. Go back to Darwin and build your mansion by the sea. Go back to Darwin and smile down on every last publican who kicked you out of a bar. Smile down on every last woman who rejected your advances. Smile down on every last bank manager and stone supplier and tool salesman who said your money was no good. Smile down on the woman who was meant to love you, but didn’t. Go, he said.
Aubrey slips the paring knife into the back of his belt. He slowly moves across to his shot hat and takes his time to place it back upon his head. Then he walks over to the duffel bag filled with raw and heavy gold. He squats and braces his back and his veins pulse beneath his sweaty skin as he strains to lift the bag over his shoulder. When the bag is up, he turns on his heels and passes Molly without a single glance in her direction on his way to the bridge, the only exit from the clearing that is open to him.
At the foot of the bridge he is stopped by the voice of Longcoat Bob.
‘You must carry all you own,’ the old man says. ‘But you must own all you carry.’
Aubrey stares into the old man’s eyes. And he is cold now, even on a day as humid as this one.
Movement now behind Longcoat Bob. Sam’s friends start talking in their own language to three Aboriginal women who have emerged from the path between the two rock walls. One of them is old, with hair as grey as Longcoat Bob’s, and this woman carries the baby boy who fell from the sky. Then Molly Hook’s eyes find another woman emerging from the pathway. A blonde who was born for moving pictures. Who wears an emerald dress. Has curls like a crashed wave falling across her ear.
‘Greta!’ Molly hollers because she can’t help herself. There is relief in that name. There is love in it even more.
But Greta does not turn to Molly Hook because she is transfixed by the sight of Aubrey. They stare silently at each other for too long. Molly wants him to go. Just go. Stop staring at him, she thinks. He doesn’t deserve anything from you, Greta. He doesn’t deserve a single look from those silver screen eyes. Look away from him, Greta. Just look away and he’ll go.
But she does not shift her gaze. She doesn’t even blink. And the shadow man is allowed to speak, though he only says a single word. ‘We . . .’ he says. And then he stops. He says no more. He smiles. And he drops his head and turns to cross the bridge.
Aubrey steps gingerly onto three slender eucalypt trunks made black and slimy by the spray from the rapids below. Boot after boot after boot. The bridge bends under the weight of the gold on his shoulder and Molly watches him pause. He puts another foot forward and the bridge still bends, but it holds his weight and the gold’s weight, too. Only six or seven more yards to the end of the bridge, he thinks. There are butterflies in his stomach and he can feel the glowing from the gold inside the duffel bag. The glorious glowing. The only thing he has ever needed.
Boot after boot after boot. Almost at the middle now
