The mine entrance is not much wider than the door to a two-man tent and a man emerges from it now, hunching down and pushing a cart of mined ore. He wears a singlet and pants and a brown stockman’s hat. His brown beard is full and billowing down to his chest.
‘His skin,’ Greta whispers.
Molly looks closer. There are small lumps across the man’s arms and shoulders. Ulcers and scarring. His right cheekbone is abnormally enlarged and the skin on his forehead is swollen and so dry it’s started to crack like the clay in Hollow Wood Cemetery during a drought. The man lifts heavy rocks from the mine cart into a hopper connected to the crushing plant and Molly can see now that three of the fingers on his right hand have been severed at the middle knuckle. On his left hand he’s missing his thumb and forefinger.
‘Let’s keep going,’ Greta says, standing and turning to go back the way they have come but she stops because she is confronted by a large man resting a pickaxe on his shoulder, filling the width of the trail back to the silver road. Greta inhales sharply, reels back at the sight of him. His face, too, is dry, and so swollen that it looks distorted, like it’s been moulded out of shape. There are patches of scarring and discolouration across his neck and arms. Welts and small growths. But Greta is drawn mostly to his eyes. He has no eyebrows nor any eyelashes, and he only has one eye he can see out of, his left one. Where his right eyeball once was, there is an empty socket containing a thin pool of blood. His nose is distorted and big. Molly can’t remember when she last saw a man built like this. He’s a giant to her. Big broad shoulders. Big biceps. Big legs. Big fingers and thumbs. Big brown hair on his head, in natural and careless curls.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, softly. A thick Irish accent. His face is so stiff his speech feels like old air being forced through a crack in a mountain. ‘Not so easy on the eye am I?’ He chuckles to himself. ‘We’ve been up here so long we almost forgot what we must look like to pretty girls like you.’
Greta gives him a halfhearted smile. She studies the man’s face.
‘You two lost or something?’ he asks.
Molly jumps on the question. ‘We’re going to find Longcoat—’
‘My feller and this one’s dad are camped back along the plateau,’ the actress interjects, with a natural ease. ‘We were out looking at the birds and butterflies when we heard that rock crusher thumping away and we thought we’d come and have a look at what was scaring all the birds off.’
The man with the pickaxe nods. He looks at Molly and she nods too.
Then the large man smiles. ‘Well, let me fix you a warm brew before you go.’
The crusher hammers into another chunk of quartz. Thump. Thump. Thump. Twigs and dry leaves break beneath boots behind them. Greta looks over her left shoulder to see the two miners from the crushing plant now standing behind her.
‘Thanks for the offer, but we’d best be pushing on,’ Greta says, moving forward. But the large man steps sideways to block her.
The beating of Greta Maze’s heart. Thump. Thump. Thump.
‘Please,’ the large man says, dropping the pickaxe to his waist. ‘I’m afraid I must insist.’
*
Two thick logs for seats and a stump for a table. A black billy simmers on an iron heat rack stretched across a fire set inside a circle of broken rocks. The large man with one eye holds an enamel cup filled with tea in his left hand. He sips and he appreciates the warmth of the brew.
Molly holds her tea in two hands, her elbows resting on her knees. She’s staring at the swelling and crusty ulcers across the one-eyed man’s face. She sees his fingers more clearly now, sees how he still holds the teacup comfortably by its handle despite having lost the little finger of his left hand.
Greta sips her tea and the large man watches her do so and so do the four miners standing behind and to the sides of the improvised tea setting. Each one has his own unique range of visible swellings and lesions across his face and limbs. One of the miners is a red-haired boy, who can’t be much older than Molly. His left cheek and left upper lip are so swollen that it looks like they might swallow up his mouth, which has retreated into his chin.
‘Thank you,’ the one-eyed man says.
‘For what?’ Greta asks.
‘For drinking from my cup.’
‘The cup was clean,’ Greta says.
‘They always are,’ the one-eyed man says. ‘But few are willing to drink from them.’
He sips again.
‘My name is George Kane,’ he says.
‘Greta Maze.’ Greta turns to Molly, the girl’s cue to say her name.
But Molly isn’t following the conversation. She is too transfixed by the red pool in the well of George Kane’s right eye. He winks his left eye and the action snaps Molly out of her staring. She drops her head to focus on her tea.
‘And what’s your name, young lady?’ Kane asks.
‘Molly,’ she says. ‘Molly Hook.’
‘Go ahead and ask me,’ Kane says.
‘Ask you what?’ Molly replies.
‘That question on the tip of your tongue.’
‘What question?’ Molly asks.
‘I know,’ Kane says, smiling. ‘How do I keep my hair so clean all the way out here in the scrub?’ He runs his hand through his thick brown mop. ‘Vinegar!’ he laughs. ‘I wash my hair in vinegar!’
Molly smiles. ‘I’m sorry I was starin’,’ she says.
Kane shakes his head. ‘There’s a lot to look at, unfortunately.’
‘You boys come over from Channel Island?’ Greta asks.
‘You know Channel Island?’
She nods. ‘I act a bit,’ Greta says. ‘Me and some friends, we were asked by the church to go over and perform for the kids.’ One of the toughest performances of Greta Maze’s fledgling career. Crossing
