Confusion across Yukio’s face. ‘Hocus . . . pocus?’ he says, doing his best to repeat the words accurately.
The pilot turns to Greta, who rolls her eyes.
‘I don’t care about the gold,’ Molly continues. ‘I just want to find Longcoat Bob. He’s the bloke who put a curse on my family because the buried gold was his and my grandfather stole it. But then my grandfather put that gold back because all these terrible things started happening to him and his family members, but even after he put the gold back Longcoat Bob never lifted his curse from my grandfather, Tom, and all those terrible things kept happening.’ Molly is making her own realisations as her explanation is unfolding. ‘And now . . . and now . . . those terrible things are all happening to me.’
Yukio struggles to make the slightest sense of Molly’s words. ‘Curse?’ he says, repeating an English word vaguely familiar to his ear.
‘Yeah, curse,’ Molly says.
Yukio makes a walking gesture with his fingers. ‘You?’ he prompts.
‘We’re walking to the range,’ Molly says, pointing at the two red sandstone plateaus in the distance. ‘We’re going to find the silver road and then we’re going to find Longcoat Bob.’
‘Bob,’ Yukio says.
‘Yeah, Bob,’ Molly says.
Yukio waves his handgun towards the sandstone range.
‘Aruke,’ he says. He waves his gun again.
‘Sorry, I don’t speak Japanese,’ Molly says.
Another walking gesture with his fingers. ‘Aruke.’
‘Walk?’ Molly guesses.
‘Walk,’ Yukio repeats.
Molly turns to Greta. ‘He wants us to walk,’ she says happily.
Greta shakes her head.
Molly throws her duffel bag over her shoulder. ‘You comin’ with us?’ she asks Yukio, bright and optimistic.
‘Aruke,’ Yukio says blankly.
Molly marches off through wetland grass up to her thighs. ‘I think he’s comin’ with us,’ she shouts to Greta, who runs to catch up with her.
Yukio falls in behind them, his handgun pointing at Greta’s back.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ Greta whispers.
‘What?’ Molly ponders, innocently.
‘He’s not coming with us, Molly. You think he parachuted out of his fighter plane and floated all the way down here just so he could take a gentle stroll with us?’
Molly looks back over her right shoulder to see Yukio sloshing through the grass, the handgun still firmly gripped in his right fist. Molly gives him a warm smile, turns back to Greta. ‘He’s gonna help us, Greta,’ she says, never more certain of anything.
‘Molly, wake up,’ Greta says. ‘He’s going to walk us into the foothills of that range and he’s gonna shoot you between the eyes and he’s gonna rape me and if you’re lucky, kid, it won’t be the other way round.’
‘You think he’s a bad one?’ Molly whispers.
‘It doesn’t matter what one he is,’ Greta says. ‘That army came here to kill us, Molly. They’ve got it in for us and the kinda hate they’re carrying is a spell that can’t be lifted. You just be ready to pass me that shovel when I give you the sign.’
‘Okay,’ Molly says.
Yukio watches the blonde-haired woman and the brown-haired girl with the shovel trudge across the soggy floodplain.
‘Greta,’ whispers Molly.
‘Yes,’ Greta whispers back.
‘What’s the sign gonna be?’ Molly asks.
‘It doesn’t matter, Molly, you’ll know the sign when you see it.’
Yukio sees the girl raise her right fist and extend her thumb from it.
‘What about a thumbs-up?’ Molly suggests.
‘I was thinking something a little more subtle,’ Greta says. ‘Just a nod will do. You’ll know the nod when you see it. Keep walking.’
They walk for another thirty yards or so through an open field.
‘Greta,’ Molly whispers.
‘Yes, Molly.’
‘He can’t speak English.’
‘So?’ Greta replies.
‘Maybe the sign could be a secret password that he won’t understand?’ Molly says.
‘Like what?’ Greta asks.
‘Fat barramundi,’ Molly says confidently.
‘Fat barramundi?’ Greta repeats, dubious. ‘Why “fat barramundi”?’
‘Was just thinkin’ about how much I’d go some fried fish for dinner.’
Greta nods.
‘Fat barramundi,’ Molly says. ‘No way a Jap flyboy would have eaten a fat barramundi before.’
‘Okay, Molly,’ Greta says. ‘The sign is a secret password and the secret password is “fat barramundi”.’
Molly nods.
Greta marches on, frustrated by their circumstances, the length of the grass scratching her legs, the humidity of the wetlands, the Japanese serviceman with a pistol walking behind her. Molly walks through the grass with a spring in her step, privately thrilled by the unexpected third-party turn in her quest.
‘Greta?’ Molly whispers.
‘Yes, Molly.’
‘Would “Mangrove Jack” work better as a secret password?’
*
Seen from the orange-red sky above and looking down and closer in and closer in, they are three wanderers crossing a vivid floodplain cut by sinuous rivers and wide freshwater channels dotted with lily-fringed waterholes.
The sun low and honeyed. The man in the Japanese military uniform at the back of the group stopping every so often in his tracks to breathe the wild floodplain deep inside him, to take in the vision of all this wild green life. By the edge of a clearwater billabong he pauses briefly to smell a floating vine flower, the kangkong, with its white and pink flowers shaped like trumpets. The intoxicating scent and the depth of the pink colour that deepens and darkens inside the flower’s wide throat. It makes him laugh.
‘What’s he laughing at?’ Molly asks.
‘He’s a nut,’ Greta says.
Yukio turns a full circle on his feet, taking in his setting. He raises his palms to the sky, smiling. He wonders for a moment if this very floodplain is Takamanohara, the Plain of High Heaven, and he crossed into it somehow the moment he left his war brethren flying over Darwin. A part of him surely died back there in that bomb-ravaged town, and maybe that was the part of him that broke prematurely through the gates of the afterlife and this, this sweltering, primordial,
