Greta smiles gratefully. ‘Thanks, Sam,’ she says.
Sam nods. He turns back to Molly. ‘And I guess you know how to get back to me.’
Molly nods. ‘Follow the lightning,’ she smiles.
Sam nods. ‘Follow the lightning.’
And he moves towards the girl like he wants to say something more, but he doesn’t say a word. Instead he speaks in actions, bending at the waist to kiss his friend the gravedigger girl on her forehead.
‘Bye, Molly Hook,’ he says, turning and rushing back into the vine forest.
Molly watches him disappear into the deep country. ‘Bye, Sam.’
*
Silent country. The stillness of the bush. Not even the cicadas making noise. It’s too hot and humid after the rains for activity. Greta Maze padding along the centre of the red dirt track, her face red with heat and sweat. Molly Hook beside her but walking backwards with her head tilted up to a cloudless blue sky.
‘You heard from the sky lately, Greta?’ Molly asks, not turning her head from the wide blue roof.
‘Not lately,’ she says.
They keep walking in silence, Molly still moving backwards. She stumbles in a pothole.
‘Careful,’ Greta says, reaching an arm out to stop Molly from falling onto the red dirt road.
More walking. More of Molly looking up to the sky.
Greta glances right at her travelling companion. The gravedigger girl with the shortsword of a Japanese fighter pilot tucked between her back and the loop of her shoulder bag. The gravedigger girl with her eyes and her mouth wide open to the endless sky. She smiles at the life in the child.
‘I notice you’re not rambling to the sky as much as you used to,’ Greta says. ‘You run out of things to say?’
‘I ran out of questions for it,’ Molly says, eyes still to the sky. ‘So lately I’ve just been listenin’ to what she’s tellin’ me.’
‘She?’
Molly nods.
Greta nods, too, chuckling to herself. ‘What’s she told you today?’
Molly stops on the spot, but Greta keeps walking because she can see the crossroads Sam spoke of. Their own dirt track meeting three more.
Greta realises Molly has stopped behind her. She turns around to see Molly staring at the ground. Deep in thought.
‘Today’s my birthday,’ the girl says.
Something about those words makes Greta’s flesh-and-blood heart hurt. She rushes back to Molly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know.’ She looks into her grass shoulder bag. She pats her sides where the empty pockets of her dress are. Looks around. It’s no use. There’s nothing in her bag or her pockets, nothing so far out in the deep-country silence to give her. I have nothing, she thinks. ‘I don’t have anything to give you,’ she says.
Molly looks up at Greta.
‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘I already got what I wanted.’ And she looks down at her sky-blue dress. It’s torn and covered in dirt and mud and berry stains and blood. ‘I wanted somethin’ nice to go dancin’ in,’ she says, a half-smile spreading across her face.
Greta smiles, too, wrapping an arm around the girl’s neck. ‘C’mon, kid,’ she says.
They come to the crossroads and peer along each dirt track. Identical red clay roads flanked by northern Australian scrub. The actress and the gravedigger girl standing side by side. Shoulder to shoulder. Elbow to elbow.
‘So which way you goin’?’ Molly asks, staring ahead. She knows what the answer will be. Don’t look at her, she thinks. Don’t let her see how much it hurts when she says what she has to say.
Greta looks left and ahead and then right.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘I thought I’d go wherever you’re goin’.’
And Molly stares ahead in silence.
‘Nuts like you and me should always mix together,’ Greta says with a wink.
And Molly feels that the whole of the deep country is silent. Except for the sound she now makes as she tries and fails to hide her tears.
She rubs her eyes.
‘Are you cryin’?’ Greta gasps, theatrically. ‘I thought you couldn’t do that?’
The girl laughs and snorts through her tears and her face goes red with embarrassment. ‘Turns out I can only do it when I’m happy,’ she chuckles, wiping her eyes with her birthday dress.
Greta elbows the girl. ‘So which way you goin’, Molly Hook?’ she asks.
Molly turns her head to the sky for a moment and she nods her head at that blue ceiling as though she’s heard a message from it loud and clear. And Greta watches Molly reach into her makeshift shoulder bag and retrieve a piece of raw gold bigger than her fist, which she then rests on her open palm.
‘What’s the quickest way to California?’ the girl asks. And she turns her head to Greta Maze and she smiles because the actress glows. She glows so bright that she attracts a small and wondrous creature to her that flies from the edge of the vine forest. A small white butterfly that floats out of the deep green and flutters around the shoulders of Greta Maze before rising towards the blue sky and pausing to hover momentarily above the tilted and awed faces of the crossroads travellers. Molly Hook reaches both her arms up to the butterfly, beaming and bouncing as she waves at it.
The butterfly pushes on through the warm air and Greta smiles and her eyes follow its direction of travel. ‘That way,’ she says.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The traditional story that Sam Greenway refers to in his recollections of what his grandfather called ‘The Lightning Man’ is from the story of Namarrkon (pronounced narm-arrgon), who signifies the coming of the wet season in Australia’s Top End. This story belongs to the traditional owners of this vast region and it is with
