“Not as much as I’m in.” He hoisted his bag onto his good shoulder. “An hour, then call him. Otherwise, stay away from thatman.”
* * *
There was a train leaving for Ipswich shortly after he arrived at the station: anything to get him out of Brisbane. From there,the guard told him, he could connect to Toowoomba, then pick up the Western Mail; barring anything unforeseen on the journey,he’d be in Charleville by tomorrow nightfall. Tommy thanked the man and, casting a hurried glance behind him, boarded thewaiting train.
He didn’t take his seat until the whistle had blown and with a judder the train began shunting on its way. Watching the platformthrough the window, and the carriage doors for any sign of Noone, then as the city receded Tommy flopped onto the cushionedbench and tipped back his head and let out a long, loud sigh.
He’d been an idiot yesterday. Could so easily have got himself killed.
He settled into the journey. The suburbs flashing by. Soon they were pulling into Ipswich, then after another leg Toowoomba,high in the Great Dividing Range. It still seemed incredible to him, traveling this way. Once, he had dreamed of small things,of seeing the ocean, or a city, never thought he would actually do it; now he hopped between cities like a bird. These mountainsused to be impassable, a natural wall keeping people out—and in—yet here was a train line that carried you right through themlike it was nothing at all, to a town built way up in the heavens, all shady streets and parkland, restaurants and hotels.
He had no time for sightseeing. He’d got lucky with the trains. At just before ten that evening the night service left Toowoomba for Roma with a free first-class berth that Tommy was all too happy to take. Stacking up the miles behind him. The sense of safety that they gave. Rattling over the immense plateau of the Darling Downs, its sea of crops and grazing pastures stitched together like a blanket, different tones of gray and black. Moonlit windmills broke the horizon, dotted shadows of cattle and sheep, the eerie symmetry of crop furrows ploughed in tight-knit rows. This was farming country, grazing country, not unlike the landscape of Barren Downs. A lifetime ago, but it all still echoed, his present only ever a reminder of something in his past. And now he was going back to it, to where that past began.
Still, it was beautiful country, Queensland. Despite itself. Despite him.
In his dream that night he was standing in the desert with Billy and Noone, calmly discussing the order in which they shouldeach be killed. They had their revolvers drawn and pointed at one another’s head, a triangular arrangement, links in a chain.It seemed to be understood that all of them would die here, but what they couldn’t agree upon was the logistics, who wouldfire first, different arguments being advanced and rebutted like they were haggling the price of grain.
He woke with a start in his cabin, calmed when he realized he was alone. He rose from the bunk and worked out his shoulder—he’dslept fully clothed, boots on. He lifted the blind at the window. The view took his breath away. The open plains of his childhood,gum trees and grassland and the first amber soil he’d seen in years. It grew even darker after the changeover in Roma, wherehe boarded a mixed-use goods train pulled by a black locomotive with a cowcatcher plough, no first-class privileges here,the soil outside steadily turning that deep red color he’d been born to, as vital to Tommy as the blood in his veins. Allday the train chugged across that endless nothingness, barren scrubland, empty sky, scorched by a brutal sunshine that boiledthe carriage like a stew. Passengers stripped off their jackets and yanked off their ties and fanned themselves franticallywith their hats, while Tommy simply gazed out of the window, expressionless, save the twinge of a smile, tight with trepidation,teasing the corners of his lips.
The train line ended in Charleville and with his duffel bag hooked on his shoulder Tommy slipped through the waiting crowd to the coach house, where he booked himself on the next coach heading north. But that wasn’t until the following morning, meaning he would have to spend the night. He took a room at the hotel, ate a meal and drank at the bar, avoiding the gaze of curious locals and the assumptions that they knew him from somewhere—wasn’t he somebody’s brother, father, workmate, son?—with each confrontation a flutter in his stomach that here was another Alan Ames. It never was. Tommy shook his head and mumbled they were mistaken, then, once the bar had become rowdier, drunker, and the questions become more like threats—Miserable bugger, ain’t ya, I only asked yer bloody name—turning and warning them outright to leave him the fuck alone.
The coach set out with six passengers crammed into the carriage and two more riding on the roof, among a teetering pile ofluggage and goods, all of which were gradually shed at the various towns and change stations they stopped at along the route.Now this was truly Tommy’s country. Spinifex and clumps of scrub grass, termite mounds and boulder cairns, virgin soil thathad never known a footprint, or the touch of rain. When there was only Tommy and one other passenger remaining, a white-beardedold man with mustaches waxed into points, the old-timer asked how far he was traveling, then after Tommy told him blew outhis cheeks and shook his head.
“Arse-end of nowhere, Bewley. It’s all blacks, thieves, and killers out there.”
Tommy only stared at him. Another fucking echo. Would it ever end?
He was alone in the carriage by the time they arrived creaking into the little settlement, jerking upright in his seat as the desert suddenly ended and they passed a whitewashed barn with a cross mounted above its front door. The church looked no different from the last time Tommy had seen it, when he’d
