That’s a lot of assumptions, there.

  You’re not interested? At all? You’ve been on your own how long?

  You think I’m an idiot? You’re pumping me. I’m not answering your fucking questions.

  Well, maybe I read you wrong.

  Maybe you did.

  Somehow, I don’t think so.

  He scowls. But I can see his mind at work.

  I think you need us, I tell him.

  Bullshit.

  How do I know your protein powder is real? Have I seen it? Have I watched you making it?

  Listen to you, flapping your gums. You think I’m falling for that? You think I’m likely to show you?

  Well, if you were making it down here, we’d smell it.

  You think this is the only hole in the ground around here?

  How many are you using?

  Fuck you.

  Maybe it’s all just a story. You’ve got stories, I can see that. But this cache is temporary. What about down the track? Maybe you can see the end of it. You can feel it coming. And that’s why you’re keeping us. Unconventional sustenance.

  Jesus God, he says. I should wash your mouth out. I should kill you just for that.

  Comrade. Mate. I’m only thinking aloud. Speculating. If you were a barbarian, we’d have been dead an hour ago. Right?

  You should be careful how you speak to me.

  I understand.

  I mean, Christ, man, you talk like that in front of a child?

  She knows what’s going on. She’s seen what savages do. She’s wondering the same thing as me. Who is this bloke? What’s in his heart? What’s his nature? Am I his guest or his prisoner? What will he do with me?

  Fella, if talk was food, you’d be fatter than a week-old body bag.

  Let’s just lay it out. You’ve got plenty of secure space. Some water source, I assume. Stores and juice enough for one. Shelter for much more than one. I can add to that. Augment it. I can make water, grow food, generate juice, bank it with extra batts. Don’t you see? We bring extra hands, more security. A vehicle, if you don’t have one. Another if you do. You and me, we’re both trained men. Doesn’t all this shave down the odds? You’ve been in the field. Don’t you want added capability?

  Shut up! he bellows. For pity’s sake, will you shut your fucking mouth or I’ll stuff it with rags.

  The child cowers against me.

  The bowman limps away. The lights go out.

  For a while it’s black down here. The gallery, with its close fust of iron and earth, has taken on the old field reek of piss, sweat and nervous energy. But slowly the crepey light from the vertical shaft down the way begins to insinuate itself.

  Hard to tell how long we sit in the dark. The girl settles, later she snores quietly. Then the lights come on again. And when the bowman returns, he’s harder to read. And there’s nowhere for me to go but onward.

  When I was a kid, there was still a coral trade in our part of the world. In winter, folks from the hamlet rounded the tip of the cape to forage on the western shore, shovelling up the white rubble that lay piled in rows like abandoned fortifications. Citizens worked in gangs, tossing lumps onto trucks that carted them back to the wharf, where they were loaded onto scows headed south for trade. Down there the rubble was burnt to make quicklime for cesspits and slake to produce mortar and purify water supplies. There was plenty of limestone back up in the range, and for a time it had been quarried in some of the seaward canyons, but that was a far more laborious business and hardly worth the energy required.

  My father crewed on one of those coastal traders, hauling loads a thousand klicks south, down to the harbour walls of Perth and even further afield, to the smaller ports of the cooler southern seaboard. To me it sounded like a life of grand adventure, but my mother never shared that view. She was careful to disguise it, but I think she fretted while he was away. Now and then she let slip a hint of the dangers he faced.

  The sea’s not like the land, she said. Nothing’s solid. You can’t depend on it. Ashore, you can retreat and find refuge. You can prepare for treachery. But at sea, there’s nowhere to hole up.

  You don’t want him to go? I asked.

  He’s from sea-going people. It’s what he wants.

  It’s brave work, I said defensively.

  Yes. And important. They bring back stuff we need – machine parts, metal scrap, hemp, grain, solar film, zinc for sun paste.

  But you want him home.

  Well, I like it when he’s home. And, to tell the truth, it makes me sad sometimes, to see the coral. All those bleached heads. It’s like trafficking in skulls. Just to treat sewage.

  I thought of our reeking long-drop and the slouching sack of lime inside the door. It wasn’t an image I cared to associate with my father. I preferred to imagine him on deck at night, reading the stars, watching as the flares of all those abandoned grease rigs he used to speak of fell by. Navigating by the stars, comrade, can you imagine? That was probably getting harder even then, but I love to think of that time of the Long Peace – the steady years – when the stars came out like wildflowers.

  They were long weeks when he was gone. Sometimes he’d be away for months. And when he did return, we’d never be at the dock to meet him. My mother said that, with no way for him to send news, it was impossible to know when he was due. But she seemed to have some preternatural sense of his proximity, because some mornings she’d excuse me from my chores and set me on the balcony as a lookout. She never gave a reason, and I was so glad to be free I never sought one. I was content to pace in the shade, watching the gulf glint and shimmer in the distance. The only things that moved out there were the willie-willies. They rose abruptly from the plain and twisted away to lumber across the landscape until they petered out in a welter of boiling grit. The novelty of the commission soon began to wear thin, but even so I kept a diligent watch until a pink column bloomed at the horizon and all my senses stirred.

  That pillar of dust would reach up from the earth like a seedling and, minute by minute, grow larger, its stem canting, as if toward the light. Then, at last, I’d catch a glint of metal and glass. And in time – such a long, long time – a flatbed truck would turn in off the peninsula road and roll our way until the rattle of tyres and tin was audible. Then I’d be calling, running, scrambling downstairs, fumbling with my hat and scarf.

  When the vehicle stopped in our compound, the train of dust overtook it, obscuring it entirely. And from that churning cloud, like a figure from legend, a solitary, wavering silhouette emerged to stride unhurriedly across the gibber, his face shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat. And when the truck was gone, and the grit had blown clear and there was nobody in the compound but the three of us, the skirts of his hat would flick back and there he’d be. My father.

  We’d all clutch one another mutely a moment in the scalding sun. Nobody spoke until we got him inside. I watched, shy but avid, as he freed himself of the hat and stripped off his tunic to rinse the dirt away. He had white scab on his brow and hands. On his forearms, long, silvery lines. And low on his belly, a pulpy scar like a smashed fig.

  During those homecomings I fizzed with excitement. But I was also conscious of my parents’ uncanny restraint. The caution in their movements. The courtly quietness of their tone. And somehow I knew better than to violate that. It seemed to take days for them to become easy with one another, but even after they settled it was evident, once again, that my father had brought a great silence home with him.

  With me he was solicitous, always discreetly relieving me of the worst jobs in the growhouse – whether it was feeding dead fowls through the chipper or scraping their shit into a scuttle – but at bedtime, as he sat by my cot and laid a callused hand on my arm, he told no tales of the sea or the southern cities. He seemed shy. Withdrawn, even. Looking back, knowing what I do now, I think he was cauterized, like the fearsome scar on his belly.

  Some nights I’d watch them together out on the deck smoking choof, clearly having dipped into the summer rations, as if they needed the edges taken off things.

  And this is really all I have of him. That and the expeditions to the cave. The rest is second-hand, almost mythical. I don’t know how much of it’s true in a literal sense, but I treasure it anyway. We need to believe in those who came before, the people from whom we spring. To know they had moments of nobility. Because nobody wants to feel they’re the seed of monsters. This is something I don’t need to tell you, comrade. You’re not some dozing grafter. You’ve seen monsters. Not just savages – monsters. You’ve met their grandchildren’s grandchildren. Seen their faces as it dawns on them that they no longer have firm ground to stand on. As if they weren’t all born of quicksand. Sump sludge, grease pits. Rivers of blood and fire. Christ, like me, you could almost pity them. But I know you don’t. You can’t. You won’t.

  I was not quite seven years old when my father died.

  It’s late winter. My mother and I. We’re stooped in the growhouse. She draws herself suddenly upright. Sets her secateurs down beside the crate half-filled with the tomatoes we’re picking. She winds the scarf about her pasted face and then reaches for her hat, binds the skirts at her neck. And only then do I turn to see what’s caught her attention. A pillar of dust on the plain. But she doesn’t send me upstairs to watch its progress. She instructs me to keep working, to stay exactly where I am. And, instinctively, I sense that this is not a homecoming but the arrival of something malign.

  It’s just a truck, no different from those that usually bring him. And I see her out in the compound. The vehicle pulls away. Leaves a moiling cloud to obscure her. And when it dissipates she’s still standing under the blistering sun. Alone. Stranded.

  Truth is, I don’t really know if I genuinely remember this or if I’ve constructed it from spare parts after the fact. It feels real. Seems like the truth. Later, as a youth, I needed to fill that void. As a way of recovering. And I guess my mother understood that. She told me the story, like all the others. And you know how it is. These things become your own memories. I only really knew my father through her telling. And even with everything I learnt later, I think she did right by me in that regard. I’m not bitter about it. If she’d needed to invent him completely, she would have. And I’d forgive her for it still.

  A storm, she told me. Off the Ninety Mile cliffs. His ship was lost. The entire crew gone.

  We never got his body back. No part of him ever returned to the plain except the stories we told of him.

  I took ill. I guess it was a confluence of things. The shock. Grief. And I think perhaps I tried to outrun it. Beat it with work. She suggested as much, anyway. Said she never forgave herself for allowing it. Confessed that she was so preoccupied by her own sorrow, she didn’t notice the way my distress was compounding itself. I worked myself into a state of calenture.

  Needless to say, a bout of heat fever is not the best way to begin a season underground. We were lucky the monsoon failed that summer. One decent low-pressure system – those doldrums, the humidity – would have killed me. My mother couldn’t quite believe I pulled through. But it must have been bad, because it took me the best part of the new year to recover. And I don’t remember any of it.

  I think, if I’m honest, this was my chief vulnerability in the field. They knew I was a northerner, born sweating, breathing desert air from the get-go. But they didn’t know my secret fear. You and me, comrade, we were trained to endure the heat. Think of the calefactions we’ve each seen and endured. Christ, it hardly bears thinking about. But I’ll tell you now – I fear the heat sickness more than pain. Probably a mistake to tell you, to hand you my weakness like this, like victuals in a dixy. But I’m trying to get through here. I need you to see me.

  I lost my father. Twice, as it happens. And both times I went a little mad. And look. This child. She’s not like you and me. She fears our scars. You can see it in her eyes. But, dear God, be glad she can’t see the keloid snakes inside us. Don’t you think we owe her something better than terror?

  So, yes, I lost a year. Recovered. And life went on.

  But having been such a tractable child, I became a restless and irritable youth. I was never openly defiant, but I was mulish enough to test my mother’s patience. By the summer of the year I turned fourteen, I was finding the night-time chores and morning lessons underground as oppressive as the cellar itself.

  I was old enough to take choof by then. It helped in the afternoons to ease the sense of confinement, but once the season broke and it was safe to be topside again, I was agitated in ways I’d never felt before. I was smouldering, and it scared me. I was hopeless at hiding it.

  But my mother was shrewd. The next winter she began releasing me from my early morning chores a couple of times a week. She encouraged me to roam a little. I think she figured if I was going to blow off some juice, I might as well learn a few things while I was at it.

  So I began to comb the upper peninsula, to forage and explore unaccompanied. And instead of sending me feral, it served to rein me in, because I took this new freedom as a sign of confidence, and I wanted to prove this trust wasn’t misplaced. To ensure the privilege wasn’t withdrawn, I made sure I travelled safely. I needed to demonstrate my competence and show I was serious. I took careful note of every instruction. I was fastidious about equipment and meticulous in my preparation.

  To the back of the quad I strapped a cube of water. Atop that I lashed my swag and a roll of foil. In the cargo box at the front I had supplies to sustain me a few days in case of emergency. I wore a bladder and oversoles, took a compass, barometer, and a tin of paste. Every time I set off – for the canyons and gorges, or the terraces of the western shore – I felt exhilarated. Proud of myself. As if this new freedom had been earnt, not granted.

  That first season abroad I was callow enough to think I’d achieved this liberty despite my mother, not because of her, but the truth is she wanted me out there every bit as much as I felt the need to go. I guess it was an extension of my education. And a chance for her to get some respite.

  I began with day trips. But once I’d proved I could plan and execute a day abroad solo and maintain sufficient discipline to take protective measures in the afternoon, I was allowed out overnight. In this way I became accustomed to the ascetic routine required by the conditions, always allowing time in the cooler hours, while I was still clear-headed, to search for shady hollows so that as the heat closed in I had a crevice to drag my bedroll into where I could set the foil blanket overhead and wait for the worst of the day to pass. Those were long hours. Despite the perilous urge to get on and do something, I learnt to hold my nerve. And it was this self-control and stillness that led me to see and feel things in the landscape I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

  I came home with papery snakeskins, petrified roo scat, the bleached bones of hopping mice, a fossilized tooth that filled the palm of my hand. But I saw live animals, too. Cave wasps that liked to sip at my sweat and sting me for the favour. Other creatures that conformed to certain drawings in my father’s sketchbook. A thorny devil, once. And, now and then, rock wallabies or creatures so cryptic they seemed like visitations from another time. I knew they were real because I picked up their blocky scat and caught the meaty scent of them in tenebrous overhangs, but all I ever saw were shadows flitting past the fractures in gorge walls.

  When I was fifteen, I crossed the spine of the range and picked my way down the western terraces with the salt wind in my face. I found a rock shelter. A long hollow in the limestone rampart with a wide ocean view. It was high enough to stand in, with sufficient space for twenty souls, maybe more. Here, fused into the ceiling, were large nubs of dead coral, like blurred faces looking down at me and past me to the sea. On the walls, strange patterns and marks were scratched or painted – I couldn’t tell which. And underfoot, broken shells and bones lay strewn all about. When you scraped it up, the fine dust between these fragments was dark with soot, and mixed into it were shards and flakes of hard stone, black and orange, that looked alien in this country of pale and friable limestone.

  I sat for hours to sketch all these things after the style of my father. And as the sun set in the sea and the salt breeze broke the back of the day’s heat, I came out onto the threshold of the rock shelter and watched the last light on the rolling waves. That night, on my swag, with a pouch of keepsakes beside me, I lay under the stars on the terrace beneath the rock shelter, and although I was out in the open I felt enfolded, as if the oceanic roar, amplified by the cave behind me, was spilling back out to bear me up and float me in its ancient backwash.

  Next morning, while it was still dark, I wrapped myself, pasted up, and hiked back east to the tops. I was home before the sun had time to kill me. I felt as if I’d broken through some barrier, as if childhood was behind me.

  My mother didn’t make a fuss when I rolled into the compound, but I could see the effort it took to disguise her relief. I was regaling her with details of my discovery before I’d even dismounted the quad. As she helped me unpack, she listened with a smile. Perhaps it was pride, or vindication – I don’t know. We retreated to the shade, and after I’d doused myself and sat under the HiVap a while, we ate an early lunch and talked about the rock shelter. She knew the place. Of course she did. But that hardly dimmed my sense of discovery.

  That’s quite a trek, she said. And a hell of a spot. I’m glad you found it. Did you like the view?

  Such a strange place, I told her. The sound of the sea, it filled the cave like a crowd. The old people, I could feel them there.

  Yes?

  You think I’m nuts?

  Not at all.

  But you’ve got that smile.

  Well, she said. You may have felt something.

  People. The old people.

  Yes. But not our old people. Not there. Not that place.

  But you can see it all around – bones, shells, old fires.