*
The moon and the stars and Molly and Sam and Danny clip-clopping towards the Timor Sea. Molly’s arms around Sam’s hard flat stomach, her tired head resting on his shoulders. His warm shoulders. The Darwin heat even at night-time making him sweat beneath his riding shirt. The smell of earth and horses and land, and the hope of some alternative road that extends beyond Hollow Wood Cemetery.
Sam revels in Danny’s wonder, explains in vivid detail how the horse made him shine in front of his ageing boss, Walt Hale, co-owner of Johnston Traders, one of the region’s most seasoned buffalo hunting outfits, which has ties right back to the 1840s, when the Asian buffalo was brought to the rapidly colonised Coburg Peninsula for meat and milk. The multiplying and soon-wild buffalo took a liking to the Northern Territory’s vast coastal floodplains, and canny riflemen like Walt’s father, Paddy Hale, made a fortune sending buffalo hides overseas and across the country to become industrial-grade leather coverings and belts. The buffalo horns became inlays for gunstocks and fancy handles for knives that international hunters could use to kill more beasts to make more belts and knife handles.
‘But it ain’t no picnic bringin’ a buffalo down,’ Sam says. ‘They don’t just drop like pigeons, Mol’.’
Sam kicks his boot heel hard into Danny’s belly and the horse clicks to a trot and then to a gallop. Raised coastal houses pass across Molly’s vision in a blur and she holds tighter to Sam’s stomach. ‘Hyah!’ he hollers. And the hot-blood colt speeds along the esplanade towards Darwin Harbour and Sam holds the reins in one hand as he leans over far – too far, Molly says – to his left like a circus rider.
‘You gotta get your horse right up close to that chargin’ and blusterin’ buffalo and you gotta get your rifle tip right against the head,’ he shouts. He extends his left arm like it’s a rifle in his hand. ‘You put that rifle so close you want it touching its cheek. But you need a quick, brave horse to do that for ya, and that’s what Danny here is. One hand keeping Danny steady and one hand on the trigger. Bang!’
Danny slows to a walk passing the Lameroo Baths and Lameroo Beach, and Molly wonders if even the horse is stunned into silence by what they see filling the black night waters of Darwin Harbour.
United States Navy warships, moonlit and starlit and spotlit, the reflections of the still harbour waters shimmering against their grey sidings that run on for a hundred yards and more. They are as lengthy to Sam’s eye as the dead-grass Australian Rules football fields he bounces around on with his cousins, as wide across the beam as the cricket pitches he mows into the lawn behind the church. Molly tries to count all the ships and she loses track around fifty. Sam’s eyes are drawn to an American destroyer. The last time he can recall seeing something so big was when he rode two hundred miles east from Darwin to the Arnhem Land escarpment with his uncle Ernie and they saw Burrunggui Rock lit up by the sunrise. The destroyer is the same shape as that old sandstone rock, but Burrunggui isn’t fixed with the guns the destroyer has. Sam counts them: five guns in single mounts. ‘Can’t see the torpedoes,’ he says, wide-eyed.
Patrol boats, auxiliary minesweepers, depot ships, examination vessels, American and Australian troopships carrying men in white shirts Molly can see moving back and forth across decks with the same frenetic pace the moths have when they flap around her reading lamp.
‘Dad reckons the Japs are comin’ to Darwin,’ Molly says.
Sam heels Danny and they move on towards Stokes Hill Wharf.
‘Your dad’s right, Mol’,’ Sam says. ‘That dirty ol’ war’s comin’ to us now.’
Molly fixes her grip on Sam’s stomach.
‘Look at all them boats packed in there like sardines,’ Sam says. ‘They should spread them fellers out. Make ’em harder for those Japs to hit.’
These boats make no sense to Molly in the Darwin dream. These warships make no sense. Purple plums belong in Darwin, Molly tells herself. Cyclones make sense in Darwin. The heat belongs in Darwin, the eternal sweat. Warm beer makes sense here and hand-woven baskets on market stall tables. Fat barramundi belong here and saltwater crocodiles, and the box jellyfish whose sting will make you wish you’d never learned how to swim in Darwin Harbour in the first place – or even kill you outright. Purple plums in the arms of young Chinese women. Purple plums make sense.
‘Is this a dream, Sam?’ Molly asks, her left cheek pressed against Sam’s right shoulder blade. Her eyes look out to the long, curling, wooden-deck wharf running deep into the black harbour, its cast-iron and concrete supports covered in seaweed slime and mollusc shells. Cars and bodies and cranes move around the wharf deck unloading and loading a hulking naval cargo vessel some 120 yards long and 15 yards wide.
‘I blacked out in the kitchen today,’ Molly says. ‘I don’t even remember how I got into town. I feel like I just woke up outside Ward’s Boutique.’
Danny clops along the beachfront. The gravedigger girl holds Sam tighter.
Danny stops. Sam looks out beyond the wharf. On the horizon, three jagged lines of lightning split the sky, turning it violet.
‘The Lightning Man’s comin’,’ Sam says.
Molly knows about the Lightning Man. Sam’s grandfather was the one who first told him about the Lightning Man, the spirit god who rides high in the sky on a high-speed vehicle made out of storm clouds. ‘Wish I had me one of those to get around on, eh Mol’,’ Sam said. He told Molly the Lightning Man has powerful ears that know things, that know the weather, and from
