Songlines

Chapter 1-2

Without a word, Noah sped up a little and I knew he was going to follow the cruiser. I didn’t complain. We were far enough out of town that there were only a handful of properties between us and our farms, and past our turnoff was all designated state park. That left a very small sample of people that could be in trouble. And we knew all of them.

Ten minutes later, we both breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the cruiser’s lights in the distance. It had continued to follow the road we were on instead of taking our turnoff, but Noah still followed it. He was as nosy as I was.

Luckily, with the recent rain we’d had, the policeman’s tyre tracks were easy to follow, otherwise we might not have noticed where he’d left the road just past Dead Dog Creek in the state park. There was an old fire access track leading up a gentle ridge that had recently been widened. Very recently. There were still fresh bulldozer tracks corrugating the mud.

The sick, restless feeling came back.

Noah’s old ute valiantly managed the greasy track even at the insane speeds he was asking for, and when we reached the small clearing on the other side of the ridge, there were no less than five other cars crammed into it: the police cruiser; Harry’s ute; a couple of shiny white four-wheel drives with Kolsom Mining logos on the drivers’ doors; and my aunt’s blue station wagon.

‘Kolsom?’ Noah asked, pouncing from the car and striding down a track that hadn’t existed a few hours ago. The scent of crushed ti-tree was losing the war against the stench of diesel. ‘The coal seam gas company? What are they doing here?’

‘Apparently their exploration licence extends down as far as Chentyn now,’ I said, hurrying after him through the mud. It was the half-hearted sort of mud that only reached down a few centimetres. Just enough to peel nicely away from the dry ground underneath and stick to the soles of my school shoes. ‘Aunt Lily’s been going nuts over it. She reckons their gas fields up north are poisoning the river. If they decide to start operating anywhere near here she might just have a conniption, whatever that is.’

The track curved where it got a bit steep.

‘Does it involve chaining yourself to a bulldozer?’

‘Apparently so,’ I croaked, stunned.

It was exactly the same as in my dream, only less vivid, somehow. Maybe because the reality of it didn’t convey the ominous sense of danger I’d felt. Now I wasn’t certain if I was scared because my aunt was chained to a giant metal monster or if it was because I had somehow seen what was happening without actually being present. Was there also a fallen tree nearby with a family of frightened ringtail possums huddled inside?

My aunt looked very uncomfortable, and sounded furious. ‘Then I’ll say it again. You either get your equipment off my land, or I’ll have you charged with trespassing.’

There were six men in hard hats and fluorescent orange polo shirts, and all of them turned to Senior Sergeant Loxwood, leaving it to him to respond the crazy lady.

The sergeant had been in charge of the Nalong Police Station for as long as I could remember, and after that incident with the Ashbrees’s ride-on mower, I was still just a little bit intimidated by him.

‘Ms Gracewood, this is state park,’ the policeman said. ‘Kolsom are within their licence parameters to—’

‘They need to check their maps again,’ she cut in. ‘The state park boundary is farther west. This is private property.’

Her statement was met by dubious looks from almost everyone, including me. I went to stand with the only person not frowning at her.

‘Harry,’ I muttered to the dark-skinned farmer, ‘do you need a hand?’

‘No, I think your aunt has it pretty well sorted,’ he said. He was leaning with his back against a tree, looking unfazed, but his eyes were a little too tight.

‘I mean, do you need a hand with her?’

‘Do you have any suggestions?’

‘Do you happen to have any chocolate-coated liquorice with you?’

He shook his head.

‘Then, no.’

My aunt noticed our exchange. ‘Lainie, what are you doing here?’ Her jeans were coated with drying mud and her hair windblown. How long had she been sitting there for?

‘Are you really surprised?’ Harry asked her. She didn’t reply but her face got that set look like it did whenever she caught me watching Game of Thrones.

I smiled at her. ‘I just came to ask, do you want yellow flowers or purple? You know, for the side of your combi van? I prefer purple. That way it will match your tie-dyed kaftan.’

‘This is not some Hippie thing, Lainie. This is important. And I would never buy another combi van.’

She really used to own one? Learn something new every day…

The sergeant crouched down in front of her and put on a very patient expression. ‘Lily, please don’t make me arrest you. I have enough legal paperwork from my ex-wife to deal with; I’d rather not have any more.’

Aunt Lily leant back against the machine again. Her hands were chained above her head. ‘I heard Sharlene’s getting married again. I’m so sorry, Mick.’

One of the Kolsom workers cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, but can I just point out that it’s getting late. I have a two-hour drive home and an unpleasant report to make to the office. Can the catch-up wait until she’s in jail, please?’

‘She won’t be going to jail,’ Noah said. ‘Because it’s too late in the day for any more work to be done anyway, so you might as well take the equipment back to town.’ He gave the Kolsom staff the sort of smile he used when he was confident he would get his own way. Which was all the time. Noah had an uncanny talent for getting people to suck up to him. He was fit, tall, had eyes as green as Kryptonite, and when he smiled that particular smile at you it was hard to remember that you hadn’t actually planned on making him a triple-layer Nutella sandwich. Guys at school tended to offer him their places in whatever queue he was lining up in, and girls just followed him around and giggled a lot. Clearly they’d never seen him as a three-year-old, dressed up in my aunt’s best negligee and high heels, or covered in blood and sloppy cow poo at the age of twelve with a massive grin on his face after he’d just assisted with his first calf delivery. I watched the Kolsom employees to see whether Noah’s magic would work on them too.

‘We’re supposed to leave it here,’ said a thin man with a fat moustache and a hole in his jeans.

‘Yes. Leave the machine here,’ my aunt agreed, pressing her face against the metal with false affection. ‘I’ll take good care of it.’

The sergeant rolled his eyes.

Noah cranked it up a notch, giving the Kolsom man a smile that said, ‘I’m on your side, mate. Trust me.’

The guy sighed. ‘I suppose it might be better to at least get it back down to the road before the heavy rain comes tomorrow.’

‘And you can’t work safely in that weather anyway, right? So you might as well check in with the office to make certain the locations are correct,’ Noah suggested. ‘Imagine finding out that she’s right about the boundary? That would look pretty bad in next week’s newspaper.’

‘I doubt our lawyer will have any problems proving that the work we’re doing is within Kolsom’s rights. We have approval from the state government to drill core samples throughout the valley. Besides, the access routes we’re making will assist with the local fire prevention strategy. Surely that can only be of benefit to you?’

Something in his words gave me a metallic taste on my tongue. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. All I knew was that I didn’t like the idea of them disturbing the area at all.

‘The valley is too steep and has far too much vegetation,’ Harry contributed. ‘You won’t be able to get in there.’

‘All the more reason for us to create fire access trails.’ He nodded towards my aunt. ‘Now she needs to either move or spend the night behind bars.’ The words were stern, but his voice held a note of uncertainty.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Aunt Lily declared, trying to flick her pale fringe out of her eyes with no hands.

Why did she have to be so stubborn? Noah was right. No more clearing was getting done today anyhow. A rock wallaby thumped past nearby, off for its evening graze, as if to point out to us what time it was.

Before anyone realised what he was up to, Noah climbed up onto the driver’s seat of the dozer and within seconds the beast rumbled to life.

All of us yelled at him in unison, while my aunt scrambled to her feet and Sergeant Loxwood leapt up after him.

‘Noah, you moron! What the hell are you doing?’ I tugged at my aunt’s chains. They were fastened with a combination lock that I recognised. It was the one from my old school locker that Bane had set on fire, so I started to swivel the dial around while my aunt tried to push me away.

‘Leave it, Lainie, Noah won’t do it,’ she said.

‘Oh yeah?’ I looked her right in the eye. ‘Remember that time he threatened to walk through the town stark naked if his mum didn’t let him watch the new James Bond movie?’ Not only had he made good on his threat, but he’d proven to everyone that he knew exactly how to drive his mother crazy. Mrs Ashbree was such a terrible prude that I’d often wondered how Noah had even managed to be born. My friend knew exactly how to push people’s buttons when he didn’t get his own way.

Aunt Lily’s face paled, and she stopped jiggling around. The problem was, the reason I’d bought a new lock after the fire was because this one had warped slightly, and wasn’t always that reliable. Beside us, the front bucket shuddered and began to lift.

‘Noah Ashbree, turn the engine off immediately, or I will arrest you.’ The sergeant’s face had turned a peculiar shade and his hand was actually hovering over his gun.

The stupid lock jammed for the second time.

‘Noah, it’s stuck! Please don’t hurt her,’ I begged.

Just then, the chains slid down and rattled to the ground. They had been hooked around a part of the lifting mechanism that had released when he’d raised the bucket. They were still done up, but were no longer attached to the bulldozer. The machine puttered down to thick silence and I looked up to see Noah with his hands up, holding the key and grinning at the policeman.

Not for the first time, I vowed that I was never going to speak to him, ever again.